


Vertical Horizon

by Inspirationalmisquotes, PastelWonder



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo is a Catholic assasssin, Ben Solo is a legit psychopath, Ben Solo is controlling and problematic, DDLG, Daddy Kink, Domestic Fluff, F/M, I'm going to ad DDLG twice just to be extra clear, NSFW, Not for the faint of heart, Obsessive Behavior, Oral Sex, Possessive Behavior, Rey (Star Wars) is a Mess, Smut, Unhealthy Relationships, but he means well, hear us out, implied eating disorder, infantilization, this relationship progresses way too fast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 16:03:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17963681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inspirationalmisquotes/pseuds/Inspirationalmisquotes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/pseuds/PastelWonder
Summary: In which Ben Solo is a killer-for-hire who gets mixed up with a pretty li’l thing from Brixton with no last name.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rather than open with a winded list of qualifiers and explanations, let’s just say upfront that this is going to get weird and meta and artsy. So just let it go there.
> 
> Or don’t, and enjoy the conciliatory fluff piece I have prepared as an alternative-- “Don’t Go Back to Boston.”
> 
> This fic is brought to you by the lovely and talented PastelWonder, who developed the concept, the characters, and this exceptional first chapter.

Ben Solo stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray molded into the plastic top of an over-packed trash can outside the dinner and slipped his hands inside his pockets before he ducked inside.

The rich, mixed scents of sausages searing on a griddle and burnt dark brew and waffles making under cast iron wrapped around him like a warm miasma. His eyes flicked casually around the dining room, checking corners and exists as he stepped over the crusted, threadbare carpet that was maybe once red laid crookedly in front of the hostess stand. He clocked a single customer in a fawn-colored workman’s coat nursing his coffee in front of the southeast window, and two more men in paint-splattered coveralls sitting side-by-side at the bar. In front of them, the flat screen above the liquor shelves played Fox News on mute with subtitles.

Under his table, the patron by the window tapped his heel to the time of Fleetwood Mac’s _The Chain_ wailing from the jukebox, as inside the kitchen, Reggaeton pounded from a radio above the grill loud enough to rattle the cans of cooking spray. A thick, dark cook in a spotless white coat slung a dish towel over his shoulder and called out in Spanish.

Salvadorian, Ben guessed by the accent.

“Well hey there, stranger.”

It was Ruby, a waitress in the twilight of a grueling, thankless career. His regular gal.

Although, he supposed with a small tick at one corner of his mouth, technically he was her regular.

“C’mon, honey,” her long earrings swung as she reached for a rolled set of silverware stacked on one of the shelves inside the hostess stand. “Gottcha all set up in the VIP section.”

He followed the quick swish of her ponytail to a booth in the southwest corner. It looked straight down the line of windows and over the entire dining room, with a clear shot at both exits and the double doors that lead to the kitchen.

She flashed him one of her sardonic, red-lipped smiles as he slipped off his black North Face jacket and slid into the booth. “Work okay, sugar? Long time, no see.”

His hands folded benignly on the Formica. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her smirk turned affectionate, touching the outside of her eyes as she said, “Who hey, watch it with the ma’am stuff.” She set his silverware in front of him and winked. “I’m half your age.”

His mouth twitched. He stroked his goatee to hide it. “Obviously.”

She propped her hand on her hip and gave him her best impression of annoyed. “You wanna menu, smart aleck?”

“Yes, please.”

“Dunno why,” she sighed, soft and long-suffering, as she pulled a laminated trifold out of her apron and laid it in front of him. She shook her head, making her earrings chuckle. “You always order the same thing.”

“What can I say,” he murmured, cheek finally folding with a sardonic half-smile as he studied the menu unfurling in his hands. “I love that old time rock n’ roll.”

She spared him a snort, and a gentle tap with just the tips of her painted fingers on his shoulder as she said, “Lemme get you a coffee, honey.”

He glanced up, a ghost of a smile still on his face. “Thank you.”

The diner was pleasantly roasting. Cold wafted in through the window pane and chilled his arm and the tabletop beneath it. He reached into his jacket for his pocket bible and opened to Isaiah. The juke plate turned over, letting Bowie’s _Let’s Dance_ meander amicably through the Pitbull remix stomping from the kitchen pass-through.

His lips moved softly as he read in silence, _Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire; your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is-_

Something shifted in his periphery. He glanced up with another shadow of a smile. “That was quick.”

“Was it?” A woman- no, a girl- no, an _angel_ , was chasing her apron strings around her waist. “Well that’s nice tah know. Can you get you somefin, coffee or… tea maybe?” she glanced up with a beaming smile, “Or maybe a milkshake?”

His heart tripped as adrenaline poured downward through the slats in his ribs, pooling in the pit of his stomach and suffusing him with warmth.

_Stunning._

“You’re from Brixton,” he said.

“Yeah,” impossibly, her smile widened. Her eyes, lined thickly on top in jet-black so that they looked like a cat’s, all sly and sleek and sexy, were hardly open as she gave her apron strings one final cinch.

He noticed, purely by happenstance, that his hands could touch, thumbs overlapping, if he notched them into the tight dip of her waist.

The warmth trickled lower through his gut.

He shut the cover on the wonton sinners of Israel and laid his Bible in the cradle of his jacket.

“Not many people know that,” she was saying. Her teeth were unbelievably white. She brought her long brown hair altogether over her shoulder, letting the thick curls fall sweetly past her breast.

“You’re beautiful,” he said suddenly. Seriously. Intensely.

Her lashes flickered. She blushed in a way that made his chest ache. “Wha- I- thank you. That’s- that’s so sweet a’you to say.”

God, he wanted to kiss her glossy mouth.

Instead, he deliberately folded his hands on Formica and tucked his cuff behind his watch. It was a Piguet, chronographic, fifty thousand dollars.

“Do you have a husband?” he asked quietly.

_Thou shalt not covet._

“A husband?” She laughed, a soft, startled, breathless sound. She was staring at his hands. “Oh God, _Jesus_ , no. Not a’tall-”

His eyes washed over her. _So beautiful._

“A fiancé, then?” He watched her face for a lie.

Again she laughed, slightly higher-pitched this time, as she touched her hair where it laid on her breast. “A what-”

“A fiancé,” he repeated, indulging her in a smirk that hid his teeth.

_Flustered little thing, isn’t she?_

“Are you spoken for?” he asked slowly, clearly, sensing the weight and outline of his Glock beneath his sweater as he considered the thought.

 _Ben,_ his uncle warned him, _we love what we behold._

Her nose crinkled, eyes squinching as she smiled so wide her teeth actually parted. His gut lurched, heart digging through his ribs to reach her.

“Nah-uh. No. I’m sadly single,” she sighed, all dimples and perfect pink tongue.

“Really?” He propped his elbows and stacked his hands, settling into this. His eyes trailed over her again. “I find that highly unlikely.”

“Why?”

“You’re stunning,” his stare never faltered, even when she blushed and blinked. “Gorgeous. C’mon, men line up down the street to talk to you. I know they do.”

_I would._

“Whatevah,” she huffed, still trying to sound unaffected while she beamed at her pumps. Her hips swayed softly, she shook her hair back and then dragged it over the opposite shoulder so that it rolled richly down her blouse. The movement made her little breasts press closer to the open neck of her white button-down.

_Fuck._

“It’s like, impossible tah find decent men in LA. They’re all a bunch’a broke pigs-”

His eyebrows quirked. He tried not grin. “Broke pigs?”

“Yeah, like, super-pigs. S’all like, stoners and posers and fuckboys.” Her eyes widened. She covered her mouth. “Oh shit, I shouldn’t have said that.”

He sucked his cheeks between his teeth to stop a chuckle. “No no, it’s refreshing-”

“Sorry, I’m so sorry. S’my first day and I’m like, shit-fuck nervous,” she wrung her hands in front of her apron.

“You’re perfect,” he promised her seriously.

“Really?” she chewed her lip. The eyes she gave him were as round and sweet as a doll’s.

He nodded. _Fuck yes._ “Absolutely.”

“Kay.” She twisted her fingers together, the glitter in her soft pink polish dazzling under the cheap fluorescent light. “Probably, I should like, take your order or somefin’.”

He took another long, lingering look as he nodded. “Probably.”

Her eyes danced from his to the menu to his watch. “You… know what you want then?”

His eyes never left hers. “Yes.”

Her lips parted. “Do you-”

“Here’s that coffee, sugar.”

Strange, he hadn’t noticed Ruby until she stretched out long and maternal and determined in front of the girl and set a chipped mug of steaming coffee in front of him.

His grin faltered. He felt the weight of the crucifix around his neck and where it pressed into his naked chest beneath his sweater. It seemed to burn him as he took the mug with both hands. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, baby. Want your usual?” Ruby’s smile didn’t touch her eyes this time.

The girl had shifted back and was wringing her hands.

“I forgot my pad,” she pleaded to no one in particular.

“I’ll be right back with your order,” Ruby promised. She winked, but the coldness in her pale blue eyes made his gut wrench with guilt.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

But she was already shepherding the girl towards the kitchen’s double-doors.

Watching them swing closed, he sat back and stroked his goatee.

 

 

 

In the kitchen, Rey was panicking, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t- I left my pad-”

“You’re fine, sugar-lamb,” Ruby cooed, all warm smiles again. She shook her head in motherly fashion, earrings swishing. “You just got them ol’ first-day jitters. Ain’t no thang but a chicken wang. Take a minute, okay baby?”

Rey nodded.

A minute. Yeah, a minute was good. She should take a minute and catch her breath.

Her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest.

“Just one thing, baby,” Ruby spoke over her shoulder as she moved quickly around the restock shelves, tucking fresh bottles of condiments and packets of Equal into her apron for her tables. “Stay away from that one.”

Rey froze. “What?”

“That man you was flashin’ your tiddies at out there-”

She pulled the lapels of her cheap, tight shirt closer together.

There was no malice in Ruby’s tone. Only worry. “Stay ‘way from him, sugar-lamb.”

“Why?” Rey felt like she couldn’t breathe, like she had fallen and shattered on the splotched linoleum.

“Because,” Ruby turned. She was dead-serious. “He’s fuckin’ crazy.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspo here! Thanks for reading :)

Rey watched her reflection suspiciously, checking for all the miniscule and inevitable imperfections. There was the tiniest grain of glitter pigment on the tip of her nose. Clinically, deliberately, with surgical precision, Rey pursed her lips and puffed it off.

There. Perfect.

Ben was going to pick her up in seven minutes.

Rey checked herself in the mirror one last time. She tied and untied the ribbon lace-up on her blouse. Fluffed the scrunchy, glittery top layer of tulle on a ballet skirt like cotton candy. She was swathed in pink sugar and rosewater, glittering in the glow of her fairy lights.

At last, she hopped down from her perch on the dresser and began to roam. With every lap she paced around her little apartment, she raked up some of the garbage on the counter and threw it away, gradually whittling one clean patch of burnt, warped, coffee-stained linoleum into the mess. She kicked some candle stubs under her dresser and hid the dirty clothes pile under her bed. She wished she’d taken a little extra time to make it cleaner, just in case he wanted to come in. It didn’t need much prettying though; over top all the clutter and dust, her apartment was drowning in decor; plush, blush, and mauve, crushed velvet, swaths of sparkling chiffon and lavender sachets.

Rey had lived here for a little less than a year. There was no lock and she couldn’t get a roommate, but the apartment itself was no worse off now than it had been when she first moved in. All the roaches were gone, and the holes in the plaster were patched. And even if her Salvation Army furniture tended to break under her weight, at least it had killed the echo.

Rey had moved to LA when she was eighteen. She’d waitressed. She’d bartended. She’d gone back to waitressing. She’d bounced from job to job and room to room but somehow never got out of this city. That wasn’t intentional, but it wasn’t a mistake.

Everyone else may have been gearing up to run away to New York, but Rey liked LA just fine. It was a very special place. Sometimes the traffic was loud and scary, like a thunderstorm, and sometimes the other people who lived here were mean, but as fashionable as it may be to hate it, Rey couldn’t help but love any place so warm and sparkly. It was a city like an endless summer. She loved the palm trees. She loved the heat. She loved the thin little spears of sepia-toned sunlight that shone through the cricks in the flashing neon sign that barred her window, advertising a rinky-dink basement lounge that blasted jazz-disco fusion all night long.

The minutes dragged on, and Rey paced tight, careful circles around her room, hugging the wall like she was skating. The shoes were her highest and sparkliest. Charlotte Russe. Twenty percent off. She spent all afternoon picking them out.

She spent the day before that pleading with Ruby to give her the napkin, the one _he_ had left. It had a sweet note and something called “Song of Solomon” and a phone number scrawled on it in pencil. It had been hours before Ruby gave it to her. Well. Not really “gave.” Rey sneaked it out of her apron pocket.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door like the crack of a gunshot, and Rey nearly leapt out of her heels.

Then she caught her reflection in the glare off the microwave. She stuck her tongue between her lips to concentrate, gave the ribbon lace-up one last tug, swiveled, and click-clacked down the hallway. Showtime. 

She gave her cheeks one last pinch and opened the door.

Ben looked plain and perfect, dressed sharply and expensively in royal blue and Tiffany cufflinks, his soft, dark hair slicked back clumsily. He was carrying a bail of roses as wide around as her waist.

“Hey.” He was tall enough the top of his head brushed the doorframe. “You…” he looked at her like he wanted to eat her in one bite. “You look gorgeous.”

“Thank you.” Rey beamed up at him.

For a moment they stood there, smiling awkwardly at each other, swaying on the spot like they were slow dancing without touching.

“Oh.” Ben looked down at the roses and handed them to her.

“Thank you.” Rey pressed her face into the roses and took a deep breath. “I’m going to put these in water. Would you like to co—”

“Yes.”

Rey felt herself smile so widely it hurt her cheeks. She led him down the hall.

His feet scuffed along the floor. Hands in his pockets. “You live here alone?”

“Uh-huh.” Rey found an empty oatmeal container on the counter and stuck it under the faucet. “Sorry it’s messy.”

“No, no, it’s… perfect.”

“Oh, you’re just saying that.” Rey shirked and blushed. “So where’re we going?”

“Wherever you want.”

For a moment, Rey was too distracted making sure the water hadn’t seeped through the cardboard to notice the silence that had settled.

She looked back over her shoulder.

Ben was looking at her like the wolf looks at Little Red Riding Hood in her picture books. Only a little kinder.

“What?” she giggled. Her tummy flipped.

“Nothing.” he said it just a little too late.

Rey halted in trying to wedge the roses into the little cardboard vase. She peeked up at him over the petals. _“What?”_ Her fingers crept to the lace-up between her breasts. She twisted the end of the ribbon around her pinky finger.

For a moment, the tension stretched through the silence like a live wire connecting them, taut and trembling, strained to the breaking point.

Ben crossed over to her in three steps and cleared her kitchen counter with a sweep of his arm. Toaster parts and wire coils clattered to the floor.

He hooked his hands under her knees and lifted her up like she was nothing, knocking her head against the cabinets in a flurry of candy-pink tulle and receipts.

Rey bared her neck and he sank his teeth in.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.” the way he said it sounded menacing, sounded threatening, and Rey’s legs fell open all on their own. He dragged his teeth up her neck. He smelled like cigarettes and money.

Ben pawed at her through the cloud of her skirt, digging his fingers against her pussy through an inch of fabric. He cursed, sports coat dangling off one arm as he fumbled with his zipper with one hand and rucked up her skirt with the other. Veils of pink and pearl fluttered haplessly in the air between them.

He hadn’t even kissed her on the _mouth_ yet.

It was frantic and desperate. Their teeth clacked and fingernails scratched. The sheer breadth of him was brutal. The cabinet handle dug between her shoulder blades.

Ben clawed at her ribbon lace-up and the fabric fell apart in his hands like wet paper. He grabbed her by her ankles and tugged her to the edge of the counter top. Rey couldn’t see his cock, hidden beneath her skirt, but she could feel it; the blunt, thick head nudging at her clit, the dull pressure of something too big to fit inside her. He dragged it in a circle around her clit; once, twice. He pressed in and Rey seized around him.

There was no room for her to clamp down on him. She had no more give, no more space inside her. She was too tightly wrung to give more than an inch at a time, her flesh gulping and stuttering around him, knitting tight around his cock. Something pinched deep inside her, and Rey shrieked. It felt awful and familiar. It hurt.

“What, what is it?” he pulled back, long face drawn with worry. His big nose cast a shadow along the whole right half of his face in the glare of the overhead light.

“Too fast.” Rey breathed in deeply, her shoulders juddering in their sockets with the movement. Got to pull it together. It’s no big deal. She’ll just--

Ben dropped to the ground so fast Rey winced in sympathy at the sound of his knees hitting tile. She peered over the edge of her skirt. “Ben?” she said, curiously. “Are you—”

Digging through the clouds of fabric, he seized her ankles and wrenched her legs apart, sealed his lips around her clit.

Talking. Talking was bad. There should be no talking. Rey was going to be quiet now.

He lapped at her sex in broad, long strokes, sucking soft kisses against her tender flesh, flicking his tongue, pinning her hips to the countertop when she tried to buck upwards into his mouth, when she tried to wrench herself away. It was too harsh, too much, too perfect. Rey’s fingers twisted into his blue-black hair at the root and pulled.

It took her a minute to realize he was spelling the ABC’s on her clit with his tongue. No. Not the alphabet.

B-E-N-J-A-M-I-N.

High school. So. Lame.

She put a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.

Still. Like high school. It was kind of sweet.

And just like that, she was a teenager in love.

A breathy laugh slipped out of her and Ben pulled off her with a smacking sound, his pink lips plush and wet with her slick, his eyes dark with concern. “Too much?” he drew his lips along her leg. His eyes flickered up to hers and he kissed the crease of her inner thigh.

Rey’s legs were shaking so hard her sparkly stilettos were dangling from the tips of her toes. Her lips peeled open and her head fell back against the cabinet with a dull thud. She bleated, “Yes.”

“Good.” Ben spread her folds with his thumbs and licked a stripe up her center.

Rey whimpered.

He kissed her in soft, languid drags of his lips, in nips and pecks, and teasing grazes of teeth. He bullied her to the brink again and again only to pull back and lick sweet, soothing circles around her clit, rosy and raw, holding her on the edge but not letting her tip over.

“Ben.” Rey begged. She made her voice high and girlish and sweet, the way she did to get out of parking tickets. “Please. Please—”

_Daddy_.

She bit back the word. Wedged it back into her jaw, ground it between her teeth. It was too soon, far too soon, she’d only scare him off.

“Please, Ben, let me come.” A veil of candy-pink tulle fluttered down between them, settling on his hair like a rose-colored lense.

Ben stood back up and pulled her to the edge of the counter. His pale cheeks were flushed, lips swollen. Rey reached up to stroke his cheek with the backs of her fingers, and he leaned into her touch like a flower toward the sun.

His eyes were dark and hooded, swimming with emotion and intensity and something dark and terrifying Rey couldn’t name.

He notched the head of his cock against her sex and pressed in, gently, steadily, in one long, slow thrust.

Rey clutched at his shoulders. She caught his lips in a kiss. It was messy. Their teeth-clacked. She could feel every inch of him. 

He drew out and slammed back home, and Rey banged her head against the cabinet handle. Again.

Her little breasts bounced with every thrust, every harsh, raw drag of his cock drawing out and ramming back in. It rattled the plastic cups in her cupboards. It made her teeth clack.

Ben was making noises like a lion tearing into a gazelle. Cursing and snarling and twisting his hands in her hair. Telling her she felt perfect. So tight and pretty and perfect and he could fuck her forever like this, he could, she’s so beautiful, he can’t believe she’s letting him touch her.

He collapsed over her, battering into her again and again, splitting her open, hard and heavy and blissfully, magically, inadvertently violent.

It was all just a hair shy of painful. He was still too big. It was too much. Too rough. But she came anyway, loud and messy and shameless. She wrenched one out just for him. Just a little one. But it made his eyes roll back in his head.

“Ben.” Rey clutched at him, fingers crumpling the perfectly starched collar, shoes clattering to the floor, ankles crossing behind his waist.

He took her hand off his neck and kissed her fingertips, eyes half-closed, expression blissful and blank. “Come home with me.” he murmured. “Move in with me.”

Rey felt her eyes well. Her chest hurt so much. Like there was too much happy to keep inside her body, like it was crushing her from the inside out, splitting her skin at the seems, rinsing the world clean with warm white light. She looked back at him tearfully, heart soaring, blood pounding. “Kay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to the lovely and talented PastelWonder!
> 
> https://royramsey.tumblr.com/
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/works
> 
> https://inspirationalmisquotes.tumblr.com/


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise we’ll get to the kinky stuff soon. Thanks as always to the gorgeous and talented Pastel, who has graciously entrusted me with these lovely characters <3.

Rey was all set to move in.

Ben hurried along the rest of the week’s work and took Friday off to help her pack up her things.  
It happened like clockwork. Three days, three kills, debriefing, Mass, Confession, moving.

“What’d the poor bastard ever do to you?” Hux had clapped him on the back, uncharacteristically good-humored, after Ben took a six-block shot with a busted scope from a rooftop at one in the morning.

Snoke actually whistled when he gave that second report.

The third assignment was a little more conspicuous. Broad daylight. Stab wound. But this was Los Angeles. Another day, another body found, another future episode of forensic files. He hadn’t been caught yet.

Ben loved this city.

The commission he got for his second job was enough to pay off her debts.

He went back to his empty apartment for the last time and showered, careful not to touch the blood soaking into his tac-vest.

The next day they both had off.

Ben took her out to “brunch” at an old-fashioned sit-down diner. Not Ruby’s. It was themed like a malt-shop, with a sea-foam juke box and swing music. He ordered for her, and she picked at the blueberries in her pancakes while they get to know each other.

It was an arduous process. Ben knew it would be. He was shit at small talk. But he was in paradise. The conversation was strained, and the silences were awkward and stilted. But it was glorious. Even being this close to her, spending time with her, being in her space-- Ben felt ten years younger. Like his ledger was being wiped clean.

The sound of a butter knife scraping over whole grain toast split through the silence like a chainsaw.

Ben sat with one arm slung awkwardly over the back of the booth.

“Where did you grow up?” he asked.

She pressed her glossed lips together and looked up at the ceiling. “Hmmm.” she considered the question. “Most recently... Arizona? An’ some of Nevada, an’ a lil bit a Texas.” she picked up her spoon and stirred her mug of English Breakfast. “An some a Brixton, course. What about you?”

“Boston.” he tugged aside his collar and showed her his crucifix. “Long line of Irish Catholics.”

She smiled. “Like the Kennedys.”

He thought of his uncle. “Not really. How’s your food?”

“Real good. You want some?” she offered him a forkful of syrup-drenched short-stack.

Usually, he didn’t like sweets, but something in his chest twisted at the gesture. Ben snapped his teeth around the morsel so quick he scraped the roof of his mouth.

“What do you… like to do in your spare time?” he waved his hand in a clumsy circle. That was how people gestured, wasn’t it? People talked with their hands. When they talked. Ben didn’t do a lot of talking himself, unless he was giving a report, or coordinating an assassination.

“Oh I like lots a things.” she bobbed her shoulders. “Reading, mostly. I like instruction manuals. I put together a toaster last week. And I do crafts. Knittin, sewin, that sort of thing. I love the beach but I don’t usually go cause its always so crowded. What about you? What do you do for fun?”

“I…” Ben wracked his brains. He went to mass. He went to work. Sometimes he watched the history channel. Worked out. Listened to Johnny Cash and Led Zeppelin while he worked out. There was a withering aloe vera plant out on his terrace that he sometimes watered. Did that count as a hobby? He’d learned to play the recorder in grade school. He had twenty-seven illegal switchblades. Eight of them were in his jacket right now.

Rey smiled, as if she intrinsically knew he had nothing interesting to say, and she loved him anyway. “S’okay. We can do things together now. Do you like the park?”

He felt indifferent toward the park. “Sure.”

“We’ll go there tomorrow, when you’re done with work.” she still hadn’t asked what he did for a living. She didn’t seem especially interested. “We can play Bachi.”

He had no idea what that was. “Sounds fun.”

They ate their breakfast. For him, the silence dragged like nails on a chalkboard, obnoxious and excruciating. But he couldn’t find a way to make it stop.

At least she didn’t seem to mind. She kept stopping mid-bite to smile at him and bob her head along to the jukebox.

Afterwards, they went back to her apartment and had sex on the threshold.

Her panties were pink lace. Ben was starting to notice a pattern. He told her so and she laughed, head thrown back, hands clasping his shoulders like she needed physical support, she was so winded with joy.

He was funny. Ben was _funny_. He felt his ears move with the force of his grin.

The second time they made love was as shaky and tentative as the first. They were still learning each other. He was still figuring her out. He knew she liked his mouth on her neck, hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses, that she was particular about the spot, that she loved when he used his teeth. She liked when he pinned her. She didn’t like teasing. She hated being made to wait.

When he dragged the head of his cock back and forth over her clit, right before he pushed inside her, she arched up and stretched like a cat in the sun, a sweet, sleepy sigh feathering against his hair where her face was buried in her neck. She liked that. Liked him. He had made her feel good.

Ben did it again and sank into her.

The first thrust was her favorite. He didn’t have to figure that out. She told him, like he thought girls only did in porn.

“Fuck, I love your cock.” her teeth dug into the shell of his ear and pulled. Her voice was pitched and syrupy. Little-girlish.

He growled and pressed forward all the way, till he couldn’t push in any farther, an inch shy of being inside her to the hilt. He rocked in and out slowly, easing himself in a little further every time, until he was flush against her.

Ben looked down at Rey. The freckles were scrunched up higher on the bridge of her nose and her face was screwed up with concentration.

“Rey?” he plied her with an eskimo kiss. “Ba--baby? Does that feel o--kay?” she clenched and he swore internally. If she did that again, he might lose his cock.

“Uh-huh.”

“You sure?” he managed not to punctuate the sentence with a thrust.

“Talk to me.” she prompted him, knocking her temple gently against his chin.

“What?”

“Just tell me how it feels. Say what you’re thinking.”

“I-- okay.” He could do this. Easy. No big deal. Not like he was scaling the side of a building again. “You feel…” he shifted his hips experimentally. Yeah. Still felt like heaven. “Really good.”

“Mmm.”

“And…” he cradled her head with one hand and braced himself with the other arm. “Really…” 

Edenic. Better than the first hundred K he ever made. Better than his first kill. Better than cocaine. Paradise.

“--tight.”

She clamped down on him, _hard_ , and his vision spun.

He drew out on her exhale and jerked back in without thinking, without stopping to give her time to adjust. Her pussy knit around, hitching and stuttering, warm and supple like sun-ripened fruit. Her back bowed.

“Sorry, sorry.” he was screwing this up. He kept forgetting to do everything the article said to. He supposed to go slow. He was supposed to give her time to get used to the size of him.

He tried to adjust them so his forearm rested under her head, to keep her comfortable, and he pulled on her hair accidentally.

“Shit sorry--”

But then she was coming, clamping down like a vice around him, not even pulsing just squeezing tighter and tighter, wringing him for all he was worth.

He was only human. Ben collapsed on top of her and came with a groan. It came too quick and was gone too fast.

Her orgasm lasted for an age. Her head whipped back and forth on the floor and her fingers curled into his jacket sleeves. She whimpered pitifully and her pussy fluttered around him.

Then she wriggled out from under him and clambered to her feet, walking off the aftershocks of her orgasm like it was nothing, like she was only bit breathless from a game of tennis. She stretched out her shoulders and jerked her head towards one of the apartment’s four rooms, dress hanging down around her waist, panties dangling from one ankle. Her nipples were crinkled in the cool air, her little breasts; soft little mouthfuls, rosy from his teeth. “Come on. Let’s go pack up my stuff.”

Ben collected himself and carefully got to his feet, suddenly very aware of the weight of the eight illegal switchblades concealed in his jacket. He could have hurt her. He would have to be more careful from now on, now that it wasn’t just him. He had other responsibilities now. Time to grow up.

He followed her to her bedroom and stopped stock-still in the doorway.

Her room looked like a camgirl’s. The curtains, framing high, narrow windows, were pink lace. The bed was a sea of sparkly plush throws and ribbon scraps, magazine pages, perfume samples and Victoria’s Secret promotions, Claire’s accessories and heart-shaped throws. The floor was scattered with copper wire and batteries.

“I don’t have to bring _all_ ’a it.” Rey sidled up beside him, arms crossed over her chest, looking sheepish.

“No, no.” he caught himself. “You can bring whatever you want.”

“I know ‘s a lot.”

“No.” he scratched the back of his head, wracking his brains for something to say. “Just-- is there anything special? Anything you can’t buy new?”

“Petah.” she answered instantly. “Petah Rabbit.” She skipped across the bare patches of threadbare carpet to retrieve a loveworn stuffed rabbit from a chair in the corner. She pressed its cold plastic nose to Ben’s cheek and made a kissing noise.

He felt himself smiling a little, foolishly. “Anything else?”

“Hm.” Rey tapped a sparkly pink fingernail against her chin.

They boxed up Peter Rabbit, and some of her clothes, an excessive amount of jewelry and makeup, her books, and a few chipped mugs and cassette tapes with sentimental value.

She carried the littlest box and chattered all the way to the car.

His apartment took up most of the eighteenth floor. Around his sixth year working for Snoke, Ben had started running out of ideas about what to do with his money, and a penthouse suite sounded like the most logical use of it. He didn’t think to worry till they were right outside the door that she might not like it. It was hardly to her tastes, from what he knew about her. All black granite, oak, and stainless steel. Expensive, modern, minimalist.

But when he opened the door and showed her inside, Rey hooked her two little fingers into her mouth and whistled like she’s trying to get a Taxi.

“Do you really _live_ here?” she tilted her head back to look at the ceiling.

“Do you like it?” he sounded nervous and hopeful to his own ears.

Rey clasped her hands together. “There’s so much room.” she beamed. “Can I decorate?”

“Of course.” she could paint the walls fushia for all he cared.

He showed her his bedroom, and she fell totally silent. At first he was terrified she didn’t like it. 

But then she was climbing onto his bed with its dull white down comforter, splaying out her limbs like a starfish and staring at the ceiling reverently, like she was looking up at a chapel fresco instead of a wash of blank plaster. Her eyes fluttered closed. “Oh…” she sighed. “Oh Ben. It’s perfect.”

“I have work early tomorrow morning.” he told her, uncertainly. “Will you-- do you think-- will you be okay here alone?”

Rey looked up at him dreamily. “D’you have bubble bath?”

“No. I have soap.” he knew for certain he had soap.

Rey sat up and stretched like a cat, the shoulders of her ribbed pink dress bunching, hem inching up her legs. “That’s okay.” she informed him. “I think I remembered to pack some’a mine.” She smiled at him. “I will be okay.”

“You can call me if you need anything.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I’ll come straight home after work.”

“Yep.”

“There’s plenty of food in the fridge--”

She kissed him.

He ransacked the kitchen for something for her to eat-- somehow, in all his hours of planning, of pillow-fluffing, cleaning and moving his rifles into storage, it had never occurred to him that Rey, who lived off jam and butterscotch and glitter meringue, might want something to eat other than frozen corn dogs.

“I have-- there’s some pasta, I think.” Ben had pulled a box of linguine out of the back of the cupboard and dropped it on the floor.

“I’m not hungry.” she said, happily.

“Are you-- are you sure?”

It had been a long time since the pancakes.

“Yup.” Rey picked up the wood-carved statue of the Virgin Mary that he kept on a table in the hallway, the one he’d gotten on a job in Columbia. “She’s so pretty. But she looks sad.”

“That’s the Blessed Mother.” he said. “Are you sure you won’t eat something, Baby?”

Her little ears pricked at ‘Baby’. Rey fluffed her hair girlishly and set the statue back down, patting her blue-painted veil with two fingers. “Nah. I’m okay. Want to watch something?”

They watched a documentary about the Civil War that Ben had on DVD, her legs on his lap. He got her to eat some ancient peanut brittle his neighbor Martha had made for him on Easter, and then Rey rolled up under his cashmere blanket and fell asleep at seven in the evening.

Ben thought, as he carried her to bed and tucked her in, the Gettysburg address mumbling through the static in the background, that it had been a very productive day. He knew three things about her.

One. She could not be permitted, under any circumstances, ever, to learn what he did for a living. His precautionary decision to move his collection of rifles and butterfly knives into storage was the right one.

Two. She was not the doting dreamy carbon copy Betty Draper vixen of his dreams. He was sure she had never cooked or cleaned a day in her life. She was hardly a fantasy come true.

Three. She was the holiest thing he had ever touched or tasted or been near or dreamed of, and he would love her till the day he died.

Ben pulled the blanket up to her chin and rubbed her shoulder. She wrinkled her nose, kicking and snuffling in her sleep.

“Goodnight, Sweetheart.” he bowed his head and said a prayer for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Sorry I've been really preoccupied recently, but I will get to responding to your lovely comments soon <3
> 
> https://royramsey.tumblr.com/
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/works
> 
> https://inspirationalmisquotes.tumblr.com/


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I know this changes POV's smack in the middle of the chapter, but it is what it is.
> 
> Warning: this chapter includes traces of awkward fumbling ddlg smut. Read the tags.
> 
> You're all dears. Thank you so much for your encouragement, patience, and support. <3

Rey knew it was a niche, but she’d never gotten round to feeling guilty about it.

And to anyone who thought she should-- “Grow your own damn daisies,” as one of her old foster aunties used to say.

And anyway, even if it were anyone else’s business, Rey wasn’t in the habit of feeling guilty in _general_. She wasn’t an apologetic personality.

She was still nervous about bringing it up to him.

Ben was just so _vanilla._

“You feel beautiful, Sweetheart” he’d said to her, only just this morning, pressing in to the hilt and pinning her wrists to the bed linens.

Beautiful. She had felt beautiful.

And then, later, when they were making breakfast-- sausage and egg-whites, and Ben was going to show her how to make home fries later this week when they got potatoes-- he had pressed their noses together and given her an “eskimo kiss.”

Sometimes, she thought it might not phase him. Ben was thirty-four. What were the odds he’d never heard of it before?

But then, you had to consider that the thirty-four year old in question was Ben Solo, and the list of things he had never heard of included— hashtags, tapas, Hamilton, Coachella, macchiatos, This is Us, jeggings, and Webkinz.

She had no idea how he’d ever gotten on without her.

In the few short days since she’d moved in, Rey had been coaching Ben on how to survive everyday life. Like how to tie a clove hitch knot and make brownies in a mug. She taught him all about adobe, and even a little binary, and that you needed two shower curtains; the pretty glossy one for the outside— preferably embellished with seashells and mermaids, but it was negotiable— and the lining, so you didn’t get mildew.

He was teaching her all sorts of things too. Mostly about how to stay safe in the city and be more aware of her surroundings, but there was some useful information mixed in with his endless lecturing. How to say “fuck” in Italian and kill a man with a letter opener. Only in self defense, of course. Ben was so noble.

He knew a lot about self defense, actually. Apparently you weren’t supposed to get blood all over you when you were fighting. Heros in the movies were always getting drenched in the blood of their enemies, but according to Ben, it was a surefire way to get HIV.

He had to be a spy.

Maybe that could be his big secret. The one he could reciprocate with when she shared hers. It was only fair.

Rey had never actually had to explain it to someone. 

Her Ben, bless him, wasn’t easy to talk to at the best of times, but she decided it was optimal to educate him on the matter right after sex.

It was a tried and tested formula, one that yielded stellar results.

“You want to what?” his broad, pale chest heaved under the bedcovers. He looked dazed and only a little confused. There was a thin line drawn between his brows and his eyes were just the teensiest bit crinkled at the corners with concern.

“It’s just a kink.” she’d told him, waving her hands carelessly, as if the weight of the world didn’t rest on his tacit cooperation.

Ben nodded, his fingers knotting in the top sheet and pulling it out of her twisting, fidgeting grasp, down over her waist to bare her chest.

Rey preened under his gaze in the warm winter light, temporarily distracted. He thumbed at her nipple, making the pink skin crinkle and blush, and she giggled, squirming away.

“And you… like that?” he swallowed. “That’s what you want?”

Rey shrugged, shooting for nonchalant.

“What is it you want? Exactly?”

Rey looked into his eyes and knew immediately that this wasn’t Ben trying to cut a deal. He wasn’t trying to gauge what she wanted so he could decide how much he was willing to give her. This wasn’t about compromise. This was Ben at his finest. Devoted, simplistic, and efficient.

He was going to give her everything. No catch.

Rey’s heart skittered in her chest. She caught his hand in both of hers and held it to her heart, nestling closer under the covers.

She broke it down for him, step by step.

First. The basic premise. The rules. The expectations. 

It felt as though she were explaining an elaborate board game.

When they reached “I fuck for Daddy, Daddy buys me baubles,” Ben made her go through all her jewelry and give him anything she hadn’t bought herself. He let her keep the rosary the nuns gave her and the little silver necklace from her friend Rose. He took everything heart-shaped, just to be safe.

He was very kind about it, the way he was about everything, but stern, and vaguely psychotic. Ben never raised his voice at her, or hit her, or called her names or anything. He always touched gentle.

He still meant things when he said them. And there was always that crazy Ruby talked about, simmering just beneath the surface, crackling in his colorless eyes like a slow-burning fuse.

Rey didn’t care. She wasn’t scared of Ben.

He wanted to know exactly how many men, who they were, how far they’d gone, how long the relationships had lasted. He wanted every last detail.

He had a lot of questions. Just generally. Go figure.

 

 

 

“What do-- do I just. How… what should I? I mean.” 

Ben wavered anxiously, hands darting in and out of his pockets as he shuffled in place. He sat down on the couch and folded his arms. He unfolded and stood up. He put both his hands in his hair.

“There isn’t any sort of form.” Rey assured him. “There’s nothin’ to it, truly.”

She was sitting on the living room floor in front of him on the wide white rug that had been stark as snow until she moved in. Now it was covered in glitter and paper dolls’ clothes and nail polish smudges. It wasn’t ruined. But it made the place looked lived-in. Like he had been living in a stock-footage picture of a home until she was in it.

Since they’d gotten out of bed and ransacked her jewelry collection, Rey had donned one of his turtle necks. The collar came up to her ears. Her body was lost in a swath of heavy black rayon and her legs were splayed in a perfect V, lace-cuffed sock feet pointed toward the ceiling. “It’s real simple.” she said, the sleeve of his shirt flapping as she waved her hand. “You just gotta call me baby and be real bossy, an’ pull my hair if I start sassing.”

“You’d like that?” Ben felt his brows scrunching together in a frown, despite his best efforts. He didn’t want to hurt her.

“Yep.” Rey jerked her head once, very positively. She looked perfectly confident, but he could tell she was shaking. She paused. Laced her fingers. “If you don’t like it, we don’t have to.”

“No.” he said hurriedly. “I want to.” He sat down in front of the sofa across from her. He knew Rey was teetering on the edge of a perilous drop into hysterical despair. She was always looking for signs he was going to leave her. Reasons he didn’t love her. She needed endless affirmation, and Ben was more than willing to lavish her.

The little lines between her brows disappeared like ripples in water smoothing out into stillness. She smiled nervously.

He cleared his throat. “Should we just… start? Then?” Ben clapped his hands down on his folded knees.

Rey plucked at the fringe on the scruffy white rug. Rocked back on her heels. Ben stayed stock still as she crawled over to him and eased herself into his lap. Her legs slid around his waist.

Her forehead was level with his chin. Her skinny arms shook where they were wound around his neck. For a moment, he panicked. Then he remembered their talk. The article he’d skimmed frantically while she was in the bathroom. What she’d said about her hair. 

Cautiously, Ben reached up and sifted his hand through her long, loose hair. He twisted. Pulled.

Rey’s back bowed. The broad collar of the turtle neck slipped down to expose her neck. Her hips jerked.

Ben rucked his shirt up over her hips and wound the gusset of her panties around his fingers, pulling them to the side. “Are you going to behave?” He worried her earlobe between his teeth experimentally. That seemed right. He’d heard someone say that once, in porn.

She whimpered.

“Rey.” He stroked the crease of her thigh and pinned her still in his lap with his free hand. “Are you going to be a good little girl for me?”

Rey’s eyes fell closed. His touch strayed further down her thigh. Her chin dipped in a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

Ben snapped the band of lace at her hip, and she started. "Good." With one hand, he undid his pants.

Rey stared at him with owl eyes and slack, bitten lips, startled and helpless, awaiting instruction.

“Fuck yourself on my cock.” said Ben.

The words themselves didn’t sound alien. He’d probably said them to her before at some point, unprompted. But the tone tasted strange in his mouth. Not bad or wrong, because he could never hurt Rey, not even in a game. But different.

It was what she wanted.

Tremulously, Rey drew him out of his pants and held aside the sopping gusset of her underwear. Wobbling on her knees, she lined him up and sank down.

The first thrust pried her open, achingly slow, his cock stuttering deeper inside her as her pussy fluttered and yielded and gulped him down.

Ben’s head fell against her frail shoulder. Her little body almost crumpled under the weight of him curled around her. He couldn’t help it. It was indescribable. Divine. Endless. She breathed in starts and little hiccups, her muscles jumping with every spastic breath, and every twitch pulled him deeper inside her. It felt perfect and immoral. Like picking apart a rosebud with his fingernails to see the blossom.

“That’s it, Baby Girl.” He cooed at her, dazed, senseless, drunken, not even sure what it was he was slurring as she impaled herself on his cock, inch by inch. “Take all of it.”

She simpered. Seized and fluttered around him, mewling as his cock dug deeper, split the petal-pink folds of her little cunt open and dug at the soft flesh between them, drenched in slick like icing sugar.

Ben shoved his hand between them and fingered her artlessly, stroking her open with the pad of his thumb, giving her a knuckle to grind her clit against and take the edge off.

She clenched and wrung herself tighter around him, only working him deeper, splitting herself open, her soft flesh giving helplessly.

He was only halfway in.

Every time. Every fucking time.

It didn’t even seem logical. How she could still be _this_ tight. How it could still be _this_ good. But it was.

Ben stirred from his sex-drunken daze long enough to remember the game.

“You feel so good, Baby Girl.” He wrung her hair, blunt nails raking over the nape of her neck.

She opened her mouth and the world split out in a helpless wail. _“Daddy.”_

Ben’s heart skipped. He swallowed against the ache in his throat. This was nothing. Nothing he couldn’t do for her.

“Be a good girl for me.” He murmured.

He took her hips in his hands and pulled her down to the hilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks as always to the marvelous Pastelwonder <3 Go check out her new fics, they're killer.
> 
> https://royramsey.tumblr.com/
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/works
> 
> https://inspirationalmisquotes.tumblr.com/


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks, as always, to the endlessly inspiring, breathtakingly talented, sensational Pastelwonder. You give great advice. xoxo

The second time she said it, they were fucking at four in the morning.

She’d woken him up. It had been purely accidental, of course. “Oh. Did I wake you?” after ten minutes of innocently rubbing her ass against his cock. At which point, Ben didn’t care that he had to be up in two hours.

He kissed her neck in that spot that she liked, sucked and bit his way down to her breastbone. “Can I go down on you?”

She wriggled underneath him. “Yeah.”

He kissed down the front of her unbuttoned dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up six times. Her panties were pink, like always, a little scrap of rhinestone-studded lace sopping wet at the gusset.

He drew her legs apart and settled himself between them, scraping his stubbled cheeks along the silk-soft skin of her inner thighs. He nipped at her hip bone. Pecked a kiss against the inside of her knee.

Ben knew he was getting better at this. He could tell by the way her thighs quivered and her head rolled back and forth and her fingers twitched and flexed into fists, in her hair, in the bedsheets, grasping at nothing like a startled infant.

He was beginning to figure her out.

He dotted kisses in the crease of her thighs, and then hurried up and put his mouth on her just as she started to tug on his hair. She hated being teased.

It wouldn’t be a very gentlemanly thing to say, and she’s such a lady he holds his tongue-- but she did have such a pretty cunt. Soft and slick and rosy, like flower petals seeped in morning mist. Ben drew her folds apart with the pad of his thumb and licked up the seam of her sex, coating his tongue in her slick, sticky and saccharine as raw honey.

Rey’s back arched off the mattress.

Ben’s forearm wrapped around her hips, pinning her down and splaying her open as his tongue worked against her. With one finger, he pulled back the hood of her clit and kissed.

“Bennn.” she pulled at his hair.

“Hush.”

_“Ben.”_

He kissed her slowly, achingly, like he did when he first kissed her on the mouth, straining not to rut his hips into the mattress. He had to get better about taking this part slow. Romance her. Don’t rush. Ease into it.

His lips molded around her clit. His tongue dipped, and her hips twisted in his grasp. He rolled his tongue rhythmically, eyes closed, jaw working, muscles straining with the effort of keeping her still. Rey loved being pinned. She loved not being able to pry herself out of his grip. And she loved thrashing around, just to be extra sure she couldn’t get away. Which was confusing. And counterintuitive.

But Ben didn’t care. He wanted her to get everything she wanted. And then some.

He pushed her to the brink and pulled back.

“Bennnn.” she keened.

His lips ghosted over her folds. She was so close, she’d come if he breathed on her hard enough. “What do you want, Baby?”

She simpered something unintelligible.

“What was that?”

“ _Daddy._ ”

Ben panicked for a fraction of a second. And then everything clicked into place, like it did on the job right before he took the shot. Everything narrowed and sharpened at the corners. Perfectly clear.  
“Daddy, please.”

He had this.

“Be a good girl for me.” and he pinned her hips to the mattress.

He didn’t really _get it._ It wasn’t his fantasy.

He wasn’t disgusted, or disappointed, or angry, as he had assured her again and again and again. It was just new. And a touch confusing.

But not disgusting. He wasn’t disgusted with her. 

Yes, he promised. He swore on St. Francis and his mother and Petah Rabbit. He wasn’t upset with her.

And he wasn’t.

He just had no idea what it all meant. What the significance was for her. Why she wanted it. What she got out of it.

He only knew that there was a structure to it, a set of rules he was expected to expect her to follow.

When she gave him suggestions for the list, he panicked. He didn’t like any of her ideas. But when he told her she could come whenever she wanted, or wear whatever she wanted, or go to bed _whenever she wanted_ , her little face crumpled and she fell back onto her heels, fists twisted in the front of her nightgown anxiously, her cheek pressed flat to Petah Rabbit’s crumpled faux-velvet ears.

And she looked like she might cry.

So Ben made a list. It was short, and bizarre, and uncomfortable. But it kept her happy.

Eat what Daddy puts on your plate.

Don’t talk back.

Always look pretty for Daddy. (She _made_ him add that one.)

Don’t talk to strangers.

Say your prayers.

He hadn’t been planning on adding that last one until she’d asked, when he knelt down beside the bed every night, if she could “play church” with him too. It had been harmless, and charming, and he thought if nothing else it would give her structure and a sound moral code to abide by. She knew she was meant to mind him, always— but it couldn’t hurt to have a bit of divine influence.

She was a bit lawless, his little girl.

He had a figurine of the Blessed Mother on his dresser that Rey called a “dolly”. She talked to it like it was a friend. She had the faith of a child, and it warmed his heart.

“I don’t know what to say to him, ‘sall.” Rey had explained, earlier, fidgeting in her seat at the dining room table and pushing her dinner around on her plate. “He’s so big an’ special, an’ I’m just little ole me.” she’d given him a wink, and a cute little shrug, and made to get up from the table.

Ben caught her wrist and hauled her into his lap. 

“You’re special.” he’d told her, firmly, gathering a forkful of sweet potato and holding it up for her.  “And he loves you. You just thank him for the things you’re grateful for and humbly ask for his blessing.”

“Oh. ‘s that all?” Rey nibbled half-heartedly at the sweet potato.

He squeezed her knee. “And eat your dinner, like a good girl. You’re too little.”

Rey simpered and melted back into him. She opened her mouth and swallowed the forkful.

That one got her every time.

They made dessert together; a clumsy, amature attempt at apple pie, with a crumbling latticework and shriveled bits of peel in the syrup. But it tasted good enough smothered with ice cream. Ben made her have some of that too; just a tiny slice with a tablespoon of Breyers. It took some coaxing, but she ate every bite. Ben held her in his lap, hand cupping the back of her head, stroking and praising and ghosting his fingers over her panties while she ate it one crumb at a time. He made her lick the cinnamon-sugar off his fingertips when she was finished. She was loath to admit it, but he knew she had a sweet tooth.

The pie was Rey’s second attempt. She’d only picked up four shifts at the diner since she moved in with Ben. He didn’t like for her to work too much at that job. It was bad for her soul. It made her fretful and nervous and overstimulated, like a newborn that’s been passed around from stranger to stranger for too long at a party. She needed a home.

He was holding her hips too tight, he realized. She was squirming further back the mattress so her shoulders were propped up on the pillow, heels scrabbling at the sheets awkwardly, uncomfortably. Ben let the arm wrapped around her hips go slack and let go of her leg, twisting his wrist to ease his fingers out of her.

“Have you had enough, Princess?” he cooed at her, pulling his hand away and drawing threads of slick between them. “Is it too much?” Even in the warm blue darkness, he could see the glassine sheen of wet soaking her pussy, dribbling down over her inner thighs, winking up at him with her every twitch and shudder.

Rey’s pretty bitten lips fell open in a cute little ‘O’. Her brows scrunched. Her eyes snapped shut.

“Daddy,” her voice was a rasping, kittenish mew.

“What is it, Baby?” Ben drew his tongue through her folds in one long, slow, hard lick.

She came shrieking. Jackknifed up and knocked her knee against his ear. Wailed and clamped and seized pitifully around his littlest finger, a halfhearted token of mercy. God in heaven, could she carry on. It was glorious.

“There,” he murmured, broad hand stroking the span of her little tummy as it rose and fell with every labored breath. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

She groaned, flinging herself back on the bed. In the dim light, Ben could see her hair had fluffed up over her face, and she was curled back into the pillow like she was already dozing off. He tickled her side, gently. “Rey-Baby.” he said.

Her answer was a single, exhausted, satisfied exhalation.

“I’m up now.” He told her, fingers walking up and down her leg.

“Go to sleep.” she chirped, helpfully. She flicked her fingertips toward the windows without so much as cracking an eyelid. “‘S dark out. Nighttime.”

He clicked his tongue and parted her legs, gently hitching her bony knees into the crooks of his elbows.

Rey’s head rolled on the pillow. “What’re you doin’?” she asked, suspiciously.

Ben tugged down the hem of his pajama pants and let the hard ridge of his cock saw through her folds; soft, swollen, still weeping sticky sweet wetness with every fluttering aftershock. His breath snagged in his throat. Her little scrunched-up face smoothed out into sleepy bliss. His hips flexed involuntarily, and the flared head dragged across her clit.

That woke her right back up.

“Daddy…” she wheedled. Her fingers curled together in a timid little fist. Clutching. Reaching.

Ben pressed the head of his cock to her opening-- so tiny, how was she _so tiny_ , how had they ever made him fit-- and rubbed back and forth till she whined, stalling for time. He’d burned through all his lines.

“Daddy.” her back arched, her hips lifted off the mattress. His cock bobbed between them, flushed, thick and heavy, throbbing impatiently.

Ben took his cock in his hand and threaded his fingers through hers, rolling her trembling fist flat on the pillow. “Daddy loves you, Baby. You know that, right?" 

Rey went quiet for a moment. Wet her lips. For a moment, Ben was seized by a bout of blinding panic. He'd gone too off script. She didn't like it. It was too excessive too ridiculous to transparent too-- 

Rey cleared her throat. Her voice was raw. "Yeah." 

"Good." Relief washed over him like hot water. He lined himself up again and pressed in, slowly and carefully, savoring the harsh, hot drag, savoring her soft, mewling cries and the anxious flutter of her pussy clamping down around him. 

" _Da_ ddy..." 

"Hush. Be a good girl for me." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for reading! <3
> 
> https://royramsey.tumblr.com/
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/works
> 
> https://inspirationalmisquotes.tumblr.com/


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know someday I will have to stop with the meandering smut and the feeeeeeelings and get to the actual plot, but that day is not today, my friends. Enjoy. Also, mind the tags (:

“It’s just not as bad as everyone thinks.”

“Right.”

“S’like…” For a moment, Rey wracked her brains for a comparison. Then her attention landed on the spoon in her hands, dripping frozen raspberry custard. “Sugar.”

“Hm.” Ben hummed his agreement.

“Like. Everyone thinks it’s the worst thing evah. But. How bad can it be?” Rey licked the back of her spoon. “Can’t be all that bad.”

Ben looked like he was going to say something, but stopped himself. He put his arm around her and tugged her closer to him on the bench.

A flock of preschoolers on a mile-long pastel safety-tether meandered past in a long parade. Off in the distance there were teenagers playing some sort of game with a ball; volleyball or football or rugby, Rey couldn’t tell—and an outdoor yoga class and a scattering of homeless people sleeping like cats curled up in sun patches, and a broken fountain spitting dirty green city water at the sky. They were on their favorite bench in their favorite little park, a wood-fenced wedge of crabgrass and wilting imported trees overlooking a five-way intersection. They’d found a parking spot five blocks away and some guy in a Volvo wolf-whistled at Rey, so Ben slammed his fist down on the hood of the guy’s car so hard there was a dent and a bruise on his hand. Rey made him stop for Rita’s so they’d have something cold to make the swelling go down. Already a big blue splotch was spreading over the inside of his wrists all the way to his pinky knuckle. Ben didn’t like frozen custard, so Rey got a bowl with two scoops and made him hold it.

“I mean, ‘s harmless.” Rey went on, stretching out one sticky finger to tempt the yellow butterfly that had landed on the arm of the bench. “An’… I mean, if you still don’t want to, s’no big deal…”

“Rey.”

“I don’ just want sex to be all ‘bout me, you know?” The butterfly fluttered up from the arm of the bench and skittered away on the breeze.

She’d been nervous since their last time. Usually, her Daddies knew what they were in for right from the start. They didn’t read from a script. They didn’t have to conduct secondary research beforehand. They didn’t just grudgingly tolerate her neurosis in bed—they expected it. Actively sought it.

Ben caught her hand between both of his own. Her heart pattered and spun. He looked her dead in the eye. “I want to give you everything you want.” he said, quietly. “Everything.”

And the sincerity. The weight of every word hanging heavy in the stillness between them, the way he didn’t blink--

Rey burst into tears.

 

  
“I just. I don’ wanna.” She gulped. “Wanna pressure you into this? Or anything.” Rey stood in the hallway, hands shoved into the pockets of a frilly pink robe that was just a half-size too big for her. She was wrapped up in a sparkly black teddy beneath it, her skin stinging raw from the scalding bathwater. The ends of her hair were still damp. Peter Rabbit was under her arm, his ears tickling her chin.

“That’s okay.” said Ben, calmly. “You don’t need to worry about anything.” He was sitting on the sofa, holding her hairbrush, his odd, darling features smoothed out in a blank canvas, placid, despite everything. “C’mere.” he gestured for her.

Rey wilted. Her knees weakened and she sank to the sofa beside him, trembling, eyes cast downwards, hands balled up in her lap.

Ben reached for her, wriggling his fingers between hers and splaying her palms, uncurling her fists. He drew her hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, her wrists, her fingertips. He picked up the hairbrush and motioned for her to turn around.

He drew the brush through her hair, slowly, carefully, catching every strand and careful not to pull. His hand smoothed down the back of her head after every stroke. It was gentle, endless and attentive. It made her toes curl. Her eyes fell closed.

“Such a pretty little girl.” his breath rasped over the back of her neck as he breathed the words into her skin. His fingertips traced a path down her spine.

Rey whimpered. She leaned back into his touch.

“Shhhh. Daddy’s got you.” he murmured.

Her throat felt raw, as though she’d been screaming. Her head felt light as air. This. This was what she had needed. This was what she’d been waiting for all her life.

He cuddled her back against his chest. “Do you want your dollies?” 

Rey swallowed and nodded weakly. Ben reached around her and pulled a ragdoll and a stuffed lamb from their little shoebox bed at the edge of the coffee table. He settled them in her lap, next to Peter. Then he pulled her back to lay against his chest and he rocked her and stroked her legs while she danced her cozies idly in her lap, making them chatter and wander and play, pantomiming them through adventures in her head, humming the narration to herself.

Every time his hand stroked over her hair, Rey felt the ache pricking at the back of her throat.

“Shhhh.” he stroked his hands up and down her legs. Bounced her on his knee a little.

Rey hiccuped. She twisted in his grip and flattened her nose against his shoulder and sucked down a deep breath of his sleep scent; cozy flannel and cheap soap, winter warmth and generic toothpaste. “I’m sorry.” she mumbled.

“What are you sorry for, Baby?” his voice dripped with honey. It made her panties stick between her legs.

“This is. S’posed to be a sex thing.”

“Mmm.” the noise he made was neither agreeable, nor apprehensive. His hands trailed softly up the backs of her thighs. He leaned back against the couch cushions. “It’s whatever you want it to be, Sweetheart.”

Her cunt clenched on nothing and she bucked her hips.

His teeth snagged on the soft flesh of her ear, tugging delicately at the soft white skin until it was red and worried. “Do you want Daddy to fuck you now, Princess?”

Rey gushed. Her core clenched and slick soaked the flimsy lace gusset of her scrap of a teddy. A ridge of sparkly lace rasped against her clit and she rode it out, hips working within the cage of his hands, mouth open, slick coating the insides of her thighs.

Ben shushed her, drawing the pad of his thumb through the wetness gathered at the crease of her thigh. Holding her steady with one guiding hand on her hip, he let her wriggle helplessly, grinding against nothing, and tasted her.

He smacked his lips. “Bit of a mess, aren’t you, Baby?”

She whined. The thin seam of lace wasn’t enough to rut against. She wanted to rub herself off on his cock through his clothes, ride his leg, fuck his fingers, anything.

“Is that all for Daddy?” He cooed. Ben grabbed her hips and turned her in his lap so she was facing him, legs limp and wrapped around his hips.

Rey bobbed her head, entranced, hips working helplessly against the fingers that wouldn’t dip or rub. If she could just have one. Just something to clamp down on.

Distantly, Rey realized she was meant to answer him. She licked her lips and bobbed her head again. “Yeah.” Her voice was light and soft as a feather. “It’s all for you, Daddy.”

“Good girl.” Ben caught her eyes for a fraction of a second, and for a moment, Rey was star struck, like the first time, like always, lost in those dark, deep, soulful, ordinary plain brown eyes that saw straight through her.

Then he ducked his head and sucked at her breast through the thin, crackling black lace.

Rey tipped her head back and keened at the ceiling for mercy.

His fingers kept tracing their slow, soothing, relentless circles, stroking the soft skin of her thighs and ghosting over her folds while his mouth worked her nipple through the teddy.

“Will you be a good girl if Daddy fucks you?” said Ben, between languid pulls at her breast. There were patches of wet fabric pressing cold and heavy where his mouth had been. His soft, big lips were speckled with black glitter.

He may as well have been quoting something. It was so by the book, so obviously rehearsed. It couldn’t have felt more genuine. Because what was more Ben than mentally rehearsing their lovemaking?

“Yes,” Rey promised, tilting her head back and scraping her hair back from her shoulder. His mouth moved obligingly to her neck. “I’ll be a good girl.”

“Since you asked so nicely.” His hand slipped under the gusset of the teddy. The fabric went taut, like he was going to rip it. “Try to stay still, Babygirl.”

Rey squeaked as he hooked two massive hands under her knees and tipped her back onto the sofa. The world flipped over. Her dollies bounced gently onto the carpet. Ben’s fingers scrabbled at the fragile ribbon lace up at her back, dragging the shimmery scrap of glitter and chiffon down to dangle from one ankle.

Ben took off his shirt with one hand and strung her legs over his shoulders, nuzzling his beak-nose against the soft, freckle-flecked skin of her knee.

He eased her onto his cock, shushing her gently as he split her open, hands clasped around the narrow cage of her rib to guide her, tugging her onto him inch by inch.

Her wet flesh split around him. Her pussy gushed and twitched, sucking him deeper. Rey whimpered. There wasn’t ever any room to clamp down. There wasn’t a hair more space inside her. He always stretched her just shy of painful, just a touch less than too much, just enough to make her want to come from the first thrust.

Ben braced himself on his forearms, fingers sifting through her hair, and started to rock into her. 

His hips moved in slow, deep, arching strokes, grinding into her clit, rubbing that sweet spot inside of her. It was clumsy and romantic. And somehow, unrealistic. Like how virgins pictured sex. Like how it looked on TV.

He still really hadn’t gotten the hang of just _fucking_ her. Pinning her down and using her how he wanted. Throwing her around on the bed, pulling her hair, calling her ‘whore’. He always just wanted to rock. He always wanted to touch foreheads, and look into her eyes.

Rey opened her mouth to say something.

But then his hips angled just a little bit, and he pushed in all the way and ground into her, and the words caught in her throat.  
It maybe wasn’t so bad. Taking things slow.

 

Rey made Ben breakfast every morning.

She never set an alarm. She was up when he was at six-thirty, the second she felt the mattress dip as he rolled out of bed for his shower. Rey tucked Peter Rabbit under her arm and padded into the kitchen in sock feet, rubbing sleep from her eyes and groping around in the dark for the hallway light, which was the softest and most diffused.

Ben said she didn’t have to get up. He was happy with protein bars and seven-eleven coffee, or skipping breakfast altogether. But Rey liked to think she’d made his apartment a home for him, as much as she’d made it one for herself.

She turned the stovetop heat up to the fourth notch and dropped two pats of butter into the skillet. Two sausage links. Not the maple kind. Ben didn’t like sweets. Two eggs, poached. Ben still didn’t know this, but the first day he was gone, she went down to the CVS down the street and bought two dozen practice eggs. She spent an entire afternoon poaching. 

A capful of vinegar. A splash of salt. A pan full of gritty gray city water on simmer. The egg whites puffed up and frothed at the surface. Rey ladled them out with a spoon onto multigrain toast. Coffee, black. A napkin. A knife and a fork.

Rey heard him get out of the shower and remembered she was supposed to make herself something too. It was one of her rules. Ben didn’t like when she skipped meals. She cracked another egg onto the still-hot skillet. It hissed and stuck to the pan. She scrambled it quickly with a fork and scraped it onto a plate.

Ben came out of their bedroom dressed in a plain black shirt and dark-wash jeans. He had the duffle bag he always took to work with the clunky black tactical vest he thought she didn’t know about, along with something Rey could only assume was kevlar. He _must_ be a spy.

“Morning.” she smiled at him around her forkful.

“Morning, Sunshine. Is this for me?”

“Yeah.”

“Looks delicious.” he pulled up a chair. “Did you say Grace?”

Rey froze with the bite halfway to her mouth.

Ben chuckled. His big, warm hand slid into hers. “It’s okay, Honey. Do you want to say it now?”

“I… can’t ‘member it…” said Rey, sheepishly.

He laughed warmly and stroked the pad of his thumb over her knuckles. “That’s okay. Just see if you can follow along, alright? And only if you want.”

“Kay.”

“Oh bless us our Lord for these gifts which we are about to receive--”

Rey tried to follow along. She really did. It was just sometimes she looked at him and her heart felt so full, she wasn’t sure how she could keep all the happy in her body. She must have been splitting ribs. Her skin must be ready to burst at the seams with it. She loved him so much.

“--and may the souls of the faithful departed--”

She thought of the last man she lived with. How he was so much more handsome, and pulled her hair just right, and showered her with meaningless trinkets and once tied her to the headboard with a pair of hello-kitty panty hose and kissed every inch of her body and then licked her till her eyes rolled back in her head.

Ben was so much better than him.

Because here’s the thing.

Ben didn’t always make her come. He didn’t always mean it when he spanked her. He made her go to stupid mass and didn’t let her go anywhere without telling him and thought Lana Del Rey was a bad influence.

But Ben was her friend. Not just a lover and not just a playmate. He cared about her. He didn’t want her to hurt. Rey had never had a Daddy be her friend before.

“-- in Christ, our Lord, Amen.”

Rey remembered to say “Amen” just in the knick of time.

Ben squeezed her hand before he dropped it, giving her a knowing smile and putting one of his sausage links and a piece of toast on her plate. “Eat.” he told her. “One egg isn’t breakfast.”

He didn’t give her any more than that, and Rey was thankful. Baby steps.

She managed to choke down the sausage. She left the crust on the toast, and Ben didn’t say anything. He rubbed her knee under the table. “There’s my good girl.”

Rey felt warm all the way down to her slipper-socks.

“You’re doing so well, Baby.” his fingers stroked up and down along her inner thigh. “I know you’re trying hard for Daddy.”

“I am.” Rey smiled softly up at him. She resisted the urge to suck in her gut.

“I wish I could stay.” he murmured, fingers still tracing their way higher and higher up her thigh.

“So stay.”

“Baby….” his tone was know-better. Just a hair shy of being a reprimand.

She wasn’t supposed to wheedle.

Rey stood up from the table and put her dishes in the sink. “Then git.” she jerked her chin toward the door. “I’ll see you round ‘leven?”

“Maybe closer to midnight.” he put his hands on the edge of the sink, bracketing her little body with his big one, chin notched on top of her head. “But I’ll be home all day tomorrow.”

“Mmm.”

“Rey.”

“Sighing isn’t backtalk.” Rey informed him, prissily.

Ben kissed the top of her head. “Lock the door behind me.”

“I always do.”

 

 

He was on the elevator when he got the text. Halfway to the ground floor. Rubbing his lips together and savoring the taste of Rey's blue-raspberry lip balm. His archaic burner phone buzzed in his pocket. Ben took it out and flipped it open. Four words. All too familiar.

_We need to talk._

-S

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your lovely feedback and support, it is so, so appreciated. <3 Come hang out with us on tumblr.
> 
> https://royramsey.tumblr.com/
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/works
> 
> https://inspirationalmisquotes.tumblr.com/


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little heartbreak a la Pastel, anyone?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspirational, you took my filthy, macabre ravings over Tumblr chat and transformed it into a beautiful work of the heart.
> 
> *strikes a match*
> 
> But, if you don't mind...

Ben stepped off the shipping dock through an open receiving door meant for large delivery trucks and semis. The smell of rancid saltwater from the steam wafting up through the storm drain covers was so strong he could taste it in his mouth.

Inside the packing plant in the seafood district of Little Saigon was burning cold.

His cautious lumber echoed dully off the smooth, slick cement of the packing floor. He kept his hands in the front-pocket of his black, brandless athletic sweatshirt, hood pulled up. The midmorning Los Angeles sunlight streamed in slanting bars through the small rectangular vents propped open to let in the fetid shipyard air. It illuminated the otherwise lightless seafood warehouse floor in faded-edge pools of watery gold. It struck across his black eyes and made them a deep, soulful brown as he stepped through their shafts on his way to cold storage.

_Jung-Cho’s. Nine o’clock._

That’s what the text from Hux had said.

The workers on the floor packing crates of crab legs and blackshell clams onto pallets didn’t look at him.

He spoke to no one.

Coming from the cold storage, he could hear a dull, rhythmic _thwamp_ followed by fast-fading groans.

He stepped silently through the vertical sheet of cloudy perferatored plastic, long slats trailing his broad shoulders, and between the sheet racking of pans of frozen seafood in shrink wrap, to where the back of the freezer chamber had been cleared except for single manilla folding chair. The violence of the thudding grew stronger, but the bleats and groans of the man receiving the beating continued to ebb.

“Ben!” his boss took his cigar from between his teeth into his fat, jeweled fingers, turning away from the scene to pin him with a big, soulless grin.

Ben slipped back his hood and stopped. “Sir.”

The man in the folding chair listed, head lolling around to see Ben through his one intact eye. His lips moved, but all that came out was a splatter of blood that landed near Ben’s feet.

Beside him, the long, well-dressed Englishman raised his fist.

“That’s enough, Hux,” Snoke called it congenially. As he explained to Ben in a smoke-ravaged rasp, he waved his cigar, “Your brother and I were here thrashing out of the details of Mister Jungcho’s new payment schedule. Weren’t we, Hux?”

The Englishman was carefully working off a heavy set of brass knuckles from his left hand with a crisp white handkerchief. His chest was heaving, breath sieving long and steady through his lightly parted mouth. The first few strands of his appalling bright hair had come loose from its crisp side part. They wavered across his forehead with the chill air blasting through the track vents in the low, white ceiling above them.

He kept his cool blue gaze on the brass as he finished wrapping it. He pocketed it in his slim-line trenchcoat and straightened his lapels. “Quite.”

“Benny,” Snoke stepped up, wearing more fatherly, viperous affection. He took Ben’s face between his hands. “My boy.”

A cocktail of poisonous emotion abscessed in Ben’s gut, looking down into the dark eyes of his employer. Hatred. Gratitude.

Regret.

So much fucking regret-

“You been saying your prayers at night, Benny? Hope you’re saying one for your old man,” Snoke sniggered at his own irreverence. He slung his fat navy suit-arm around Ben’s thick neck.

He let it hang like a noose as he called back, “Say Hux, you hungry?”

The Englishman said nothing.

In the folding chair, Jung-Cho hung his destroyed face and wept.

“I’d say our friend here gets the picture. Let’s grab some chow, boys,” Snoke gestured with his cigar.

Hux sauntered elegantly. Like Ben’s, his footsteps made no sound.

 _The lion and the wolf,_ Snoke used to toast them in the private lounges of premier restaurants and gentlemen’s clubs. He’d stamp his feet and laugh howling, _God help the fuckin’ lambs!_

Snoke ushered them ahead of him, patting fatherly between both their shoulders in a way that made Ben sick all under his skin. “C’mon. I’m buyin’.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rey had been pacing the apartment for an hour.

It felt to her like her heart would beat out of her chest.

With her French-tip manicure, she tapped each of the three black leather barstools pulled up to the counter that divided the granite and dark cabinet kitchen from the sterile grey living room as she made her tenth pass. She held her stomach and tried not to throw up her scrambled egg and toast.

The silence was killing her.

It was always silent.

Not that there wasn’t any sound. She had _Ellen_ up full-blast and the dishwasher was going. From the set of wireless speakers in the living room, Lana was crooning to her. Saying, _Shush, pretty baby. It’ll all be alright. Always forwards, never back…_

Still.

The silence wasn’t outside her. It was _in_ her, whenever Ben went away. It had been like this ever since she could remember. If she wasn’t with a man, she was obsessing about one. To keep the thoughts that came with a false sense of security away. Whenever she thought too long about something other than a man, she remembered. And when she remembered, she wanted to go away. To be anywhere but inside herself, trapped in with her memories.

London. Houston. Chicago. Dallas.

L.A.

There was at least one man tied up with every city. Like a salt-and-pepper shaker set, she couldn’t take them separately.

Collin. Rick. Brad. Ashton. Chris B. Andrew. Chris N.

Liar. Liar. Super liar. Shit-fuck liar. Married liar. Liar. Lyin’ fucking _pig-_

She stopped in front of the sliding glass doors that led to the concrete patio overlooking Hollywood Hills. The air conditioning from the floor vent made her long, soft-wave curls ripple like a mermaid’s hair under water. It made the glass cool enough it fogged when she huffed out her breath. She wrote his name in the white frost in looping cursive.

_Ben._

He was like the man from the old Marlborough commercials. He was a Clint Eastwood Dracula John McClain. He was the type’a guy Julia Roberts ended up sorta married to at the end of _Eat. Pray. Love._

Cept she wasn’t no Lizabeth Gilbert.

She wasn’t nobody.

 _Rey._ That was her L.A. girl name, for Lana. Her best and only friend. ‘fore that it was Lexi. Then Kira. Then Lily. Then-

Her heart ached. She stopped remembering, and started pacing again.

The whole problem with Ben was, he wasn’t no problem at all. He was a good guy, a _sweet lad,_ her mum would have called him.

If Rey had ever had a mum.

His whole life was lovely and fixed and steady. And she was just a shit-fucked mess.

Ben never asked her, _Where’d you come from? Where were you trying to get to? Why are you the way you are?_

Because he didden give a shit.

Her hands shook. She straightened them out one at a time, smoothing her cheap, pretty rings down her fingers. She took a deep breath, then five.

In all this time they’d lived together, all twenty-something days, he’d never once asked for her last name.

Her phone buzzing once on the counter made her startle. She wrung her hands and bit her lip and prayed to God and Jesus Ben would walk through that door and ask her, _What’s your name, honey? Where you been? How’s a nice girl like you end up asking strange men to fuck you and call you a whore?_

She started to rub her hand over her face, then remembered. She’d spent an hour and a half feathering in a soft brown smoky-eye. Her winged liner was perfect. She was wearing a cream lace strapless dress and a pink satin sash. Size zero, thank you very fucking much.

She could barely get the zip up this morning. Already, she’d gained too much weight with Ben.

 _Peach-cheeks,_ he called her yesterday in the shower, squeezing her bum in his big, hard hands. Their bodies slipping delicately together like sea otters, he dipped his head and kissed her. He could kiss her so hard sometimes she thought she could live off it.

But last night, after he made love to her, calling her _babygirl_ and moving over and inside her all sweet and virgin-like, last night lying awake next to him and staring up at the ceiling in her silence, she realized-

She’s in love with him.

This big, brutal-looking man who carries a Bible and a switchblade and can’t fuck for shit. This man who answers every one of her questions about him with a _Hm_ or a _Can’t quite remember_ or _I don’t like to talk about that._ This man who made her give up her trinkets and her jewelry, but never asked her what they meant. Which ones were special, because  for a single week in her sad, pathetic, apathetic life, _she_ was special. To someone. _Finally._

This man who says he wants to give her everything, and don’t ask her fucking last name.

She’s in love with him. She wants to be his wife and have his babies and call herself Misses Rey Lana Solo.

And that’s her cue to go.

She picked up her phone off the bar and checked her messages.

_JR: Well hello there, Princess. Long time no see : )_

Her breath shook as she typed, _Yeah ; ) U busy?_

_JR: (….)_

_JR: Finishing up with a consult. Lunch?_

She looked out around the living room. Cold Scandinavian furniture and tiny shoebox beds for her precious paper dolls. Her belly twisted itself into knots that hurt worse than any hunger pangs.

She couldn’t look at her screen as her nails clicked across her keyboard, _Kay._

_JR: Great! Pick you up?_

Her chest was burning, a blinding sort of burn. Like looking straight into the sun. She blinked, and her lashes felt strangely wet.

_Nt. Meet u ther._

She picked up her rose gold clutch off the counter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Through a steaming bowl of pho, Snoke churned a white plastic takeout fork. His chopsticks were still in their paper wrapper.

He lifted a long, trailing spool of glass noodle and tore into it like a jackal.

Beside him, Hux neatly coaxed a half of a minced pork dumpling onto the end of his chopsticks held elegantly between his fingers.

Ben hadn’t ordered.

He wasn’t a fan of Oriental food.

Snoke smacked his thick, liver-colored lips and sat back. “Don’t know how to speak a word’a English, but these chinks sure make a mean pho.”

Hux winced.

Ben looked past them, at the older woman behind a small, loveworn wood counter. With a clean rag, she was rubbing furious and sullen at the same spot.

Briefly, their eyes met.

 _I’m sorry,_ his said.

“-to you about a problem.”

He blinked, and his boss came back into focus. He was lighting another cigar in full face of the plaque that said _No Smoking._

The woman behind the counter grimaced in helpless disgust.

“A problem?” Ben repeated. Dully, his heart struck against his ribs.

Snoke nodded as he took a drag off his cigar and puffed the smoke up at the ceiling. “You fucked up your last job. Bad.”

The knocking at his ribs grew a little louder. He wasn’t worried, per say. Not really.

But he wasn’t easy, either.

Next to Snoke, across the table, Hux’s arm was folded gracefully over the back of his chair. His wrist was clasped loosely in his opposite hand. He was watching Ben very closely.

Ben shifted, feeling the comforting weight of his Glock in its holster under his arm.

“You fucked up that job, so bad your brother had to come in and fix it. Could’a got us all put away,” Snoke rapped the table with a fat fingertip, “And you missed the last two jobs before that.”

Ben nodded, slowly. “Correct.”

Snoke snorted, a boar’s snort, and shot a sideways smile at Hux. “You hear that backtalk from Mister Bigshot? _Correct._ Whassa matter with him? Whassa matter with you, boy, huh? Talk to your old man like that?”

He was still grinning, a sage, secret smile as he jutted his chin at Ben. Like a father dealing with an errant son.

He was the closest thing to a father Ben had ever known. Certainly gave more of a shit than Han ever did. Certainly invested more in him.

But then, that bar was pretty fucking low.

Still, there was a niggle of guilt in Ben’s gut as he cleared his throat. “I got distracted.”

“So I hear,” Snoke waggled his eyebrows, “You got a broad.”

“Yes.”

“She gotta name?”

Slowly, Ben’s dark, empty stare met Hux’s calm blue gaze. “Lila Ives.”

It was almost imperceptible, the way Hux inclined his head.

Almost.

_How long did it take him to find her real name?_

For Ben, had taken just two days.

Affecting casual, he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest.

The seat was too small for him, it groaned and strained under his weight. His biceps bulged against the tight woven blend of his athletic wear. He planted his feet, knees apart.

Inside him, a rage began to stoke.

“She goes by Rey now. Just Rey. Born in Sussex. No family,” his deep, quiet timber was like the roll of thunder gathering over the high-desert.

Hux shifted, scenting lightning in the air.

“Her father was a reverend, already married. Her mother was fifteen. Rey came to America when she was twenty with an investment banker. He left her in Chicago with nothing. After that she moved to Houston, then Dallas. Dancing.”

Snoke grinned around his cigar, “Hot damn.”

“She was assaulted by her boyfriend in Dallas. He had priors. But her case was dismissed without prejudice. _Lack of evidence_ ,” here, his voice wavered. He swallowed the fury whipping through his throat.

_For I am among the least of these._

“Then she came here,” Hux supplied for him. His tone was soft, translucent. Like the smoke that coiled up from his cigarette.

“Yes,” said Ben.

Beneath his arms, his hands clenched against his ribs. That's all of her story he was willing to tell.

He waited.

Snoke considered him shrewdly over the hissing tip of his cigar.

The restaurant was quiet. Warm. The air was thick with steam fragrant with basil and light, simmering sauces. Outside, a gold wind chime with red braided threads tolled the Santa Anna winds.

“Do you love her?” Snoke asked.

“Yes,” Ben said. Something dark and malevolent was winding through him. It vibrated in his gut and in the soles of his feet and on the trigger of his Glock that was as much a part of his arm as his trigger-finger was. He slid his black, blazing gaze to Hux, who was staring back at him just as calm and mild as always.

Only exception was, his hand had shifted back his coat. It hovered lazily, like a half-formed question, over the holster on his hip.

“If you love her,” Snoke shifted forward. He pointed, with his thick jeweled finger and his smoldering cigar, “then you better let her go. I won’t have some little bitch comin’ between my boys and their business. I found you, when you were nothing. When the army kicked you out for _dangerous psychosis,_ when your cunt of a mother wouldn’t take you in. You were lying drunk in your own piss outside the VA office. I took you in and made you my son. I gave you a purpose. You,” Snoke sat back, “a dishonorably discharged psychopath. A Skywalker so fallen from grace. You had nothing but your prayer beads and the shirt on your back. I made you what you are.”

Ben’s jaw ticked. He could hear every sound, every sizzle of the grill, every rustle of the leaves of the creeping vine and bamboo plant on the counter, every tinkle of the wind chime, every breath Hux took. Everything.

He heard the violent beat of his heart.

“Cut her loose,” Snoke flicked his ash on the weathered but well-washed linoleum. He cycled his hand without looking at Ben.

“Hux will take you home.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The drive back to his apartment was silent.

He sat in the passenger seat, agitated by the way the Lexus smoothed away the sounds of the city. There was only the hush of the air conditioning, and the subtle flex of Hux’s leather gloves clenched around the steering wheel. Hux’s profile cut an unsettling contrast with the flashes of brilliant boganvia and warm sand-toned buildings blurring past them.

He drew the sedan to a smooth stop in an alley several street from Ben’s complex.

For a moment, they idled in silence.

Ben stared through the heavy tint on the windshield out the shadows of the buildings laid low by the drifting sun.

“What tipped you off?”

Hux snorted softly. His mouth quirked in a self-deprecating smirk. “I loved a woman once. It was easy recognize the signs. Though-”

He glanced sidelong, “I was a bit less _opaque_ about it.”

Ben hadn’t known that. For all these years, Hux had been the lone wolf.

Like him.

“What happened?”

What little mirth there was slipped off Hux’s face. “She went back to Chelsea, to live with her mother. She met another man.”

Where his hand was propped on the steering wheel, he studied the tips of his fingers rubbing together through his gloves. “They are married now, for quite some time. They have three children. I don’t believe he knows the first one is not his own.”

Grief lanced through Ben’s gut. Not for Hux-

But for everything he could lose with Rey.

“Must not have your good looks,” he tried for iony, and landed on pity, watching the pain move like a shadow across Hux’s face.

Hux let out a soft, scalding, bitter laugh. “No, the boy doesn't. Small miracles, I suppose.”

Silence hung over them like a shroud.

“Do you see her?” Ben asked quietly. In his own morbid imagination, it was he and Rey.

“Lavinia?” Hux swallowed, as if her very name burned his throat. His leather creaked as his hand closed around the wheel and held fast. “No. I let her go, and put that life behind me. As you will, if you have any regard for that girl.”

He met Ben’s somber gaze. There was a kind of emptiness Ben feared more than death inside his clear, blue-lit eyes.

It was the same emptiness in Ben’s soul. The one Rey washed away.

“We have dug our graves, you and I,” Hux said, “let us not drag those we love down with us. If you do indeed love her.”

Ben looked back out into the street. The sickness drumming in his gut was unbearable.

Life, without her, was unbearable.

“If you come for her,” his voice was dark, deep and ragged-edged, “I will put you in that grave.”

“You may try.”

With a snarl, Ben pulled the handle and swung the door open.

He stepped mountainous into the sun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Rey?”

Ben set his keys on the counter and waited.

“Rey?” he called out again, “Honey, you in the shower?”

She never answered back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, you think that hurt? All my usuals have a tender James Franco side-smirk and are asking fondly, "Mmm. First time?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *leans down and lights her cigarette in the flames. Takes a long drag and blows her smoke up at the night* Mmm. I've missed you, Reylo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, did Inspo mention I write mainly dubcon?
> 
> : >

Where Ben knelt on the dark, flat weave of his bedroom rug, beside their bed, he turned at the waist to her.

In his hands he held a small, simple white mug with no handle, and a little saucer with two torn pieces of bread. They’d made the bread together this morning, he standing behind her, reaching around. His long, broad body spanning like angel wings across her back. His voice in her ear, deep and rumbling, feather-soft, _“That’s it- now fold it, all the way over. Make it half. Uh-huh, now push with the heels of your hands…”_

He was watching her where she sat on the edge of the bed, wearing one of his crisp white dress shirts he wore to mass. It was Sunday, the only day he ever wore white.

When he did, he looked completely beautiful.

He was so tall that, even kneeling at her feet, they were eye-to-eye.

 _“Have you taken communion before?”_ he asked. He kept his big voice gentle. Like coaxing a wild bird into his hand.

She tried not to smile. He was such a dear thing, always trying to save her. From what he had no clue. But she did, she knew exactly what she’d done with her life. All the wrong turns and bad habits. All her sin.

For a girl like her, there was no God and Jesus. Just Lana and a man to kiss her while she wore a pretty summer dress.

Heart aching, she hugged her rabbit closer to her chest and shook her head.

 _“Do you want to?”_ he asked, still sonorous and slow. He never looked away from her soft, sad eyes.

_“If you want me to.”_

_If it’ll make you keep me…_

He offered her his big, pale hand. _“Come down here with me, baby.”_

His palm was warm, tender at the meat of it, otherwise covered in callouses and scars. A triangle at the base of his index finger was all new pink skin, the knuckle of his middle and ring fingers made their tips turn slightly to the side.

She pressed his hand to her cheek and covered it with both her own, and closed her eyes.

He stroked her with the pad of his thumb. _“The sacrament is the symbol of reconciliation. It means we come together with God.”_

She nodded, letting his words fall through her gentle and rumbling and without any meaning. Her God was right here. She was holding his hand.

_“First, we ask God to forgive our sins.”_

She snorted, and smiled, her eyes still closed. _Fat chance a’that happenin’._

But she did pray while he did, deep down inside her aching, desperate heart, _God and Jesus, let this man live forever. Let him be safe and happy. Let him sleep better, make his nightmares go away. Make him smile. Whatever kindness you might’a had set aside for me, ‘fore I was bad, give it to him. Give it to Ben, please. Please give kindness to Ben._

 _“Amen,”_ they said together.

She opened her eyes, and realized the rims of her lashes were wet.

He leaned down to her where she kneeled beside him and kissed her forehead. Then he showed her, slowly, how to make the sign of the cross.

He tipped her wine for her, and fed her the bread by hand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“- Neurological Association wants to honor me with a lifetime achievement award. So I said, Look guys, I know my work is revolutionizing the way we do microscopic implants, but the fat lady hasn’t sung on my career just yet,” John chuckled at his own wit. He propped his elbows on the table on either side of his cappuccino and stacked his hands.

The sun struck like flint off of his Rolex.

Blinded, Rey flinched and shifted out of its glare.

“You haven’t touched your frappe, Princess,” John murmured. He was watching her with calm hazel eyes that glinted in the same searing way as his watch. Only, it wasn’t from the sunlight striking through them, highlighting their flecks of gold. It was something else.

Something she never saw in Ben’s dark, soulful eyes.

“Have you been being a good girl?” he raised his cup and his eyebrows in one smooth, seemingly harmless motion.

In her lap, her hands twisted her rings around her fingers. Her heart hurt from beating so much and so fast. “Yeah.”

John was her forever-type, old and gorgeous. A bad guy James Bond. Forty maybe, two years older than Ben. Every time she looked at him, it brought back a different memory from when they lived together. The time he tied her up to the bed with her kitty panties and ate her little pussy til she wept. The time they went to Baja and made love for three days in their hotel suite. His tan, perfect body pressing her naked up against the panoramic glass as he fisted her hair and made her neck bow painfully, hissing in her ear, _“Take it, you stupid fucking slut-”_

She liked that, when they called her what she was.

Still, she couldn’t stop stealing quick, frightened glances at the wall of steel-framed glass that looked out into the street washed filthy yellow-orange by the setting pacific sun. Wishing-

“Not really, actually,” her lips drew a self-deprecating half-smile. “Been worse than usual."

_Wrecking a perfectly innocent man's life._

"Learned how to make poached eggs, though, so that’s somethin’. I guess…”

“You shouldn’t be using the stove, babygirl. That's for big girls. You’re too little.”

The smile slipped off her face. She stared unblinkingly past a corner of their table, at a perfect square of sunlight on the dark slate floor. It made the mica inside the stone shimmer. Fool's gold.

Like her.

She thought of Ben, so big and strapping. More brute muscle than she’d ever seen on one man. Watching his tight, black shirts strain across his body as he worked them carefully over his chest and down his abs. The silent flex of his shoulders as he slipped into his holsters. Long, blue-black hair hiding his eyes inside his profile. Lips tucking in and rolling together as he thought to himself.

 _“Whatchu you lookin’ at, kitty-cat?”_ he’d say smirking when he caught her.

“Kelly?” John was saying.

 _Who’s Kelly,_ she started to ask. But then she remembered.

That’s her.

He leaned in over his cappuccino, Mister Smooth Criminal, as she looked into his eyes. “Why don’t you come home with me, babygirl. Daddy’s missed you. Let’s go home.”

Her gut sank. She twisted her ring on her finger so hard the skin pulled and burned. “I-”

_“Rey!”_

Her heart leapt and held very still, listening.

Outside the café, a black mass was following the glass leading to the doorway. His bootsteps shook the whole world.

John snorted into his cup, “That guy looks pissed.”

She couldn’t move from her seat, heartbeat suddenly wild and caught up in her throat, as her- as Ben burst through the café door.

Literally.

He slammed it back so hard the frame hit the high, tinted glass behind it and cracked it. The door shattered on impact, leaving just the frame juddering like a tuning fork.

He showed everyone inside all his big, terrible teeth.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he roared. His athletic hoodie looked like it was going to rip with every heave of his breath. He snarled, _“Rey.”_

She clung to the seat of her chair with both her hands.

They stared at one another. Her lashes flickered, but she was too afraid to blink.

Afraid he wouldn’t still be standing there when she opened her eyes.

“Ben,” she whispered.

His lips tucked and rolled, big bull breaths streaming in and out through his nose like the chuff of a steam engine. He raked one massive hand through his hair.

John shifted, eyes ping-ponging nervously between them. “You two know each other?”

Ben _moved._

A woman in the corner of the café screamed, as the barista at the register behind the counter flung back his head and moaned, “Not on my shift, Lord Jesus.” Another holding a green-handled broom popped his tongue and sang, “Yass Gawd!”

All while Ben lifted John wholly from his chair by his throat.

Rey’s heart stopped beating watching Ben choke him higher and higher still.

 _He’s fucking crazy,_ Miss Ruby had said.

“What’d you think, _asshole,”_ Ben sneered seething through his teeth. Every beautiful line life had etched into his face trembled with a grieving wrath. “Do _you_ know her?”

John clawed and kicked and turned purple. He gargled and rasped, “No-”

Ben tightened his crush on John’s windpipe. His arm shook. “Didn’t think so.”

He dropped John, who collapsed coughing and gasping to the floor.

“Ooo,” the barista with the green broom handle shuddered, "That was  _so_ Christian Bale."

Other than that, the café was silent.

“Get up,” Ben warned her. John continued to hiss and rattle like a snake on the floor.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It was that she was trembling all over so badly she couldn’t feel her legs. And even if she could, she wouldn’t remember how to use them.

Ben picked up the table between them, a small laminated one, and hurled it across the café.

It slammed into a set of long tables by the window, shattering mugs and toppling laptops and sending more people screaming and clambering away. In the distance, Rey could hear wailing sirens building closer.

 _“_ Get,” Ben snarled, “ _up.”_

Rey couldn’t move. Her lace slingbacks scrambled at the slate. “I- I-I-I-”

His massive hands reached for a brutal grip on her bare upper arms.

He dragged her up out of her seat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben slammed his solid core door behind them so hard it rattled in its reinforced frame when the automatic deadbolt caught.

He was shaking so hard he couldn’t breathe.

_\- gentle words wrath stirring careful my sweet sin is crouching at your door –_

His hands raked and raked through his hair.

“Ben, please, lissen to me-” she’d been begging since he put her in the car, “I wasn’t- we were just talking-”

_\- whores are liars liars are the Devil the Devil is evil two doves on the alter one white one red –_

“Ben,” she grabbed his thick, flexing forearm in her little hand.

He had started to slap and scratch his face.

He lurched and caught her by the throat.

_\- crush it crush the whore crush her now -_

_“What will you do with all your strength, Ben?”_ his mother had asked him once, when he was younger, and she still loved him. She stood behind where he sat at her kitchen table. Her hands laid down upon his back.

 _“You’ll do good things, Ben,”_ she’d leaned over and kissed his hair.

He looked at Rey and _saw_ her.

She was shaking, clutching both hands around his forearm. Terror had frozen her face. Only her lips trembled and her lashes flickered, shedding tears that ran down warm onto his hand spanning her neck. Her nostrils flared with each shuddering exhale.

He’d dragged her up onto the tips of her toes.

“Oh my God-” he brought her back to ground slowly. His arm juddered as he released and drew back. The horror surged up and swallowed him.

His heart was dying out.

“Oh God, no-” he lunged to the sink and choked over a hard dry-retch.

She smoothed shaking hands up his back, “Shhh, it's alright, it was an accident-”

“No,” he shook his head where it hung. The world swung with it, the greyscale of his apartment cycling around and around until it was only an ugly, swirling mouth. He could taste his heart beating. “Get away from me, get out-”

She laid trembling her cheek between his shoulder blades, “No, I won’t-”

He kicked the cabinet beneath the sink so hard it splintered inward and roared, “ _Get out!”_

“ _No!”_ she backed up as he spun, but hardly. Her fists were balled. All that pretty long hair she took so much time fixing was plastered to the tears and sweat on her neck as she screamed, “I’m not leavin’ you! You can’t make me!”

“Can’t I?” he stepped up, looming over her with his lips peeled back over his teeth. He wanted to get on his knees and beg her to stay with him. He wanted to snap all her beautiful bones. “This is my fucking house. You don’t belong here. You’re _nothing.”_

Oh, she stumbled back from _that._

He watched the animus drain out of her body, taking with it her will to fight. Black, ugly triumph curled its tongue up through his gut to lap him. But the guilt razoring like teeth behind it shredded his soul.

“You’re right,” she swayed on her feet, drunk on pain, eyes wide and wet and unblinking. A marionette with cut strings. A girl with a cut-up heart. “I am nothing.”

Her hands curled up like loose claws at her breasts as she bared her teeth trembling and swayed, “I am- _nothing."_

He reached for her, bleeding through every space between his ribs, “Rey, I-”

She slapped away his hand. "But do you know what you are? To me?”

She pointed at his chest.

“You, are everything. Fuckin’ _everything_ -”

Her finger turned back on her own shattered heart.

“To me.”

"So fuck you, Ben Solo," her face creased with a sob. She shook her head, and smiled, and broke his whole fucking heart, "Fuck you up the ass."

He was already moving as her steps stumbled to turn her around.

“Petah," she called out into the living room, "get your shit. We’re leaving.”

He caught her arm and cut off her short, bitter snort with a brutal kiss.

Her waist twisted, she turned and wrapped her arms so hard around his neck it ached. His tongue stuffed itself inside her mouth as his hands groped around her ass and gripped and hiked her. Their teeth scraped inelegantly, painfully.

Why, why was he always, _always_ fucking this part up?

She fisted her hands in his hair and wrenched his head back growling. This time is was her tongue down his throat.

He pinned her against the wall.

“Stupid fucker,” she called him, breathless and arching, as he latched onto her throat and gripped the neckline of her dress.

It tore into two tattered, delicate halves of the same ruined, beautiful whole.

She wrapped her bony thighs around him.

He wrapped his fist up in her hair and growled against her ear, “You are _my_ everything-”

He wrung her, forcing her starved, brittle body to arch. The brutal width of his hips and his arm beneath her kept her from reaching up to heaven. He tried not to see all her little ribs straining apart. “You are going to finish your fucking food and pick up your fucking toys and you’re going to _stop talking to other fucking men-”_

She gasped, hands scrambling at his shoulders, as her thighs tried to climb higher and higher up his hips.

He shook her by her hair, “Say you understand."

“I understand!” she bleated. The click of his belt unbuckling made her jump.

Her small sex was dripping slip, quivering when he rested his forehead on her sternum and peeled her panties to the side.

Like his soul coming back into his body, peace washed over him as his cock slid into her wet, clenching little hole.

He exhaled as he hit bottom and locked.

_Home._

“You’re gonna knock this shit off, Rey,” he graveled as he thrusted, the heavy, solid column of his cock moving hard and fluid inside her. After having her so many times in so many ways, more ways than his simple mind had ever imagined knowing a woman, he had malleted her into his perfect slot, like a blacksmith molds iron while it’s burning hot. She was tight, so beautifully, suffocatingly tight. A wet, clinging velvet mouth, she took him over and over all the way to her womb and back.

His woman, she was his _fucking_ woman.

The rib made from his clay jar.

“You’re gonna knock it all off, and be a _good fucking girl_ for me, do you understand?”

She choked and groaned and whimpered and nodded.

“You want something, you ask me. You wanna get bent over and _fucked,”_ he exclamated with a hard thrust that made her eyes roll behind her sexy little eyeshadow and made her whimper open-mouthed, “You ask me. Ask your _fucking Daddy-”_

She came, after not twenty thrusts.

“Good girl,” he purred grunting into her ear as he fucked her ruthlessly through her orgasm. She bucked and scrabbled and struggled like she was trying to unseat him.

_Good luck, darlin’._

“Come on Daddy’s big cock-”

“Ben,” she bleated, belly flexing and concaving as she rode wave after savage wave.

He took her throat again, in the way she was always asking for. In a way he thought would make him too sick to live with himself.

It was just the opposite.

He had never felt more fully alive.

“You wanna see Daddy go crazy, baby?” he huffed taunting into her ear as he sped up. She had no idea, how fucking long he could do this. How his endurance stretched from here to the end of the Earth. Her poor little pussy was sloshing, gripping pitifully to hold him still, to slow him down.

_Fat fucking chance._

“Daddy’ll show you crazy, sweetheart,” he felt her shudder and wind around him, that sweet little cunt coiling all the way around his cock as she came again. He took his hand off her throat to clap her mouth as she started shrieking her rapture loud enough to wake his dead. His gut tightened sharply but he ignored it, pounding her harder still as he whispered panting, “He’ll show you crazy all night long.”

Her legs slipped off him. He dipped and caught her, thrusting so deep she _groaned._

No more kitteny whimpers and fake porno lines. No more bullshit. She hung sweat drenched, body quaking, her sweet, bare breasts rising and falling as she panted open-mouthed up at the ceiling like a bitch in heat.

He kept her shored by his arm beneath her and braced the other on the wall above her head. Her thighs draped limp and twitching, he hung his head and watched his fat cock fuck in and out of her body as he held her up only by his raw, animal strength.

“Who loves you, baby?” he snarled, showing her all his horrible teeth.

“You do!” she shrieked.

“I do, I love you. Rey. Kira. Lila Ives-” the sob that broke from her mouth choked him. He swallowed, gut burning, chest ripping, and touched their foreheads together.

Her hands reached quaking up like a child’s to hold his neck, to hold his face. She was pouring, dripping tears and sweat and sex. It smeared his slacks and the floor and the wall behind her. He looked her dead in the eye.

“I love you, girl,” his battering strokes broke and healed her body, “I love you so _fucking much_ -”

Three more thrusts, and she came silently, eyes rolling back, convulsing. Juddering. Body shaking up from the wall.

He stepped up into her, letting her wet drench him through his clothes as he buried his face in her stranded, soaked hair and came so hard he called out. Shouting her name up to God.

Her love baptized him white.

“Stay with me, baby,” he caught and kept her by his hands holding the cheeks of her ass. Her arms were wrapped around him, her sweet, tender face buried in his shoulder.

He kissed her neck, whispered wavering and dripping tears from his lashes against her ear. “Stay with me, Rey.”

She nodded into his shirt.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well chickies, it's been real. A humongous thank you to Inspo, who not only wrote this *gorgeousable*, *sensational* fic, but then let me write the worstest parts. You're my treasure.
> 
> If you enjoy my style and would like to read more of my works, you may find them here: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/works I filthily and unapologetically write Rux.
> 
> Bring us home, Inspo.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Makeup sex / kinky fluff / aftercare city

When Ben woke up, Rey’s little hand was wrapped up in his. Their fingers laced together. Without opening his eyes, he pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

“Morning, Daddy.”

His lips stroked the curve of her thumb. “Morning, Sunshine.” he graveled. His eyes opened slowly.

She was sprawled out on her side of the bed as if thrown there, limbs splayed out like a starfish, not wearing a stitch. Her skin was sun-spotted and golden in the warm morning light. There was a bruise on her shoulder. There was a smudge of mascara under her eye in the dried out print of a tear.

His heart pitched and dropped in his chest.

With a twist of her hips, she rolled herself over into him and swung one leg over his chest. 

“Hi.” She nuzzled the tip of her little nose to his, lashes fluttering shyly, knees curling up around his ribs.

Ben slung an arm around her. “Hey there, pretty Baby.” His voice cracked. “How’re you feeling?”

She arched her back like a sleepy kitten, dragging her bare pussy against the seam of his pants. She yawned, showing all her perfect teeth. “Really good.”

“Mmm.” His hands smoothed skeptically over her body, feeling for damage. There was a tender patch of skin in the dimples of her lower back. Rugburn. A little knot beneath her shoulder blade from being fucked through a wall. Bruises on her hips. A crosshatch of crooked purple teeth marks on her breasts and shoulders. A little ring of lovemarks like rosebuds around her neck.

“Benny?” she turned her face shyly against his neck and scraped her soft cheek against his stubble.

“Rey?”

She paused. “You still love me?”

His throat ached. His chest hurt. He wet his lips. “I do.” he said. The words felt flimsy in his mouth. “I love you.” They were like wet paper. They weren’t solid enough to carry the breadth and depth and zealous, heart-wrenching, mind-numbing, unearthly intensity of what he felt.

But they soothed her. Her body melted into his and she went limp on top of him.

He cuddled her to his chest, suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of violent affection for her. Last night they’d slept through the remaining hours of the night as if in shifts, one stirring just as another was drifting off to sleep. He’d patched her up in meager increments, cleaning cum from her hair and cheeks and her raw, red pussy, glistening wet and ruddy like an open wound. He’d taken off all her makeup for her. He’d wrapped her in the heavy cashmere blanket she liked. He’d cleaned her iced the bruises on her hips and kissed the marks left by his mouth and prayed and prayed and prayed.

“Daddy loves you, Babygirl.” he told her again. “So, so much.”

“Kay.” she sounded timid, but not unconvinced. Not completely. She took a rattling gulp of air and exhaled a tiny sob. “I love you too.” She pressed one of her knees to the mattress and started to rock back and forth.

It took him a minute to parse what she was doing, but as soon as he did, he clicked into gear. “How’s that feel, little girl?” Ben rumbled close to her ear.

She put her head down and worked her hips. Her face tilted away from his, shyly.

He gripped her ass in one big hand and guided her as she ground herself against the ridge of his cock.

He remembered what he said to her the time before last, the thing that made her curl into herself and shudder-snap through her orgasm. “You have to ask Daddy for what you want, Babygirl.”

She mewed.

Hand still guiding the clumsy, jerky undulations of her hips, he chucked her gently under the chin and turned her face up to his. “Look at me, Rey. Use your words.”

She looked up at him with wide, misty eyes, and Ben felt his next breath lodge in his throat like a stone. Her pussy was sopping, warm, sticky wet soaking into the crotch of his pants. He lifted his hips a fraction of an inch, and her eyes fluttered closed.

“Please, Daddy.” Her accent rolled silkily over the words.

She could feel him now, skin pressed to hers from where his cock jutted out over the waist of his pajama pants. It made her frenzy. She rutted down onto him, hair in her face, making the soft, whimpering sounds he could only hope and pray were real.

“Hush, Baby.” he steadied her with a hand wound into her hair, pinning her in place, and reached between them to take himself out of his pants.

“Daddy, gimmie.” she simpered.

“Daddy’s gotcha.” He held Rey steady as she settled her hips over him, rutting against him, trying to take more than she could handle too fast. “Hey. Hey--” He dragged the head back and forth over the hood of her clit in a slow, soft circle, just the way she liked. It settled her. The lines between her brows smoothed out and her lips went slack.

He pressed in slowly, gently, careful not to jostle her, careful to mind every bruise and soft spot as he eased her down to the root.

Her knees dug into the blankets and she immediately started to bounce.

“Easy, Baby.” her fawn’s eyes fluttered down at him confusedly as he caught her little waist in his hands and slowly, gingerly, pulled her down to the hilt. “Go slow.”

Any other day, that would have gotten him a scoff or an eyeroll, the kind she’d throw a fit over if he didn’t respond in turn with “loose the fucking attitude,” or some similar threat.

But she didn’t get hissy. She didn’t bait him. Her pretty eyes shut and her fingers curled into fists on his chest.

Ben rolled his hips slowly, testing the waters, touching all the empty spaces inside her where hurt shouldn’t be. The freckles on her nose crinkled as she frowned. Her mouth opened.

Ben held her hands to his heart and slowly, gently, started to move.

 

 

They woke up slowly, not willing to wander and farther than a room away from each other. Ben went to his closet to get dressed and Rey trailed after him, rubbing her eyes, swimming in one of his dress shirts and sporting only one sock.

“Hey, where are you going?” she piped. He turned around and bumped into her.

“Nowhere.” he said.

She blinked up at him. She held up her arms.

He notched her little body into the curve of his elbow and hiked her up to his hip. Her legs wrapped around his waist.

They’d already slept through mass. Ben hadn’t missed mass in three years, since he’d gotten caught up an odd Sunday at work. It was the least of his worries. He had worse sins to ask forgiveness for.

Ben jangled her idly, bouncing her on his hip as he walked around the apartment, kicking a path through the mess they’d made last night, righting toppled furniture, collecting his wallet and keys, watering her plants. He sat her down on the carpet and pulled out a box of paper dolls from beneath the coffee table.

Rey loved paper dolls. She could languish on the carpet for hours, making the little cutout figures talk to each other. It was her third favorite game, she once told him. Her first favorite was sex. Second was Polly Pocket. 

It was typically one of three narratives. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Annie, or an original screenplay which, from what little he could gather, seemed to be loosely based on The Boxcar Children. Today it was Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The swanky little brunette flapper, wearing a tiny bead garland of pearls, sashayed between buildings made of baking soda containers and tissue boxes. She stopped at the corner to look in the sharpied window.

“You want diamonds, Babygirl?” Ben murmured, curling his body around her. She was slumped back against him, propped up on one elbow with her neck craned so she could maneuver the paper Audrey around Tiffany’s.

She turned the doll around with a flick of her fingers to address him (Ben was meant to be playing the male lead, whose name he could never remember.) “Diamonds?” she put on her pitched, silky, moviestar voice. “Oh no, I could never…”

The guilt was still wringing his insides, curling in a vice grip around his heart. But the thought of her soft and drowsy with sex, curled against him, covered in his come, full from the food he’d put on the table and warm from the clothes he’d put on her back, with precious stones woven through her hair and on her ears and at her throat--

In place of that cheap, tacky, heart-shaped crystal jewelry _that bastard_ \--

No. No. No. Ben squeezed his eyes shut.

“-- on older ladies.” Rey was still chattering in her Holly-voice. “But diamonds are _far,_ too sophisticated for a girl like me.”

“Hm.” Ben wrapped a hand around her hips and tugged her body closer to his. “No they’re not.”

He couldn’t see her face, but he felt her little body wriggle away, just a little bit.

“Does Rey-Baby want diamonds?” He cooed at her. Calm down. Calm down. In. Out. In. Out.

_For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God._

She arched her back a little and fluttered her lashes, flirting shyly. “Who, lil’ old me?”

“Yes, you, Princess.” His big hand wrapped around her leg, hitching it up over his hip and pressing his half-hard cock against her ass. His fingers wriggled through a gap in the buttons of his dress shirt and tickled her tummy.

She squealed and kicked. The rumpled, glossy bobbles of braided hair on top of her head trembled with glee as she twisted away.

He dug his teeth into the shell of her ear and tugged. Gently.

Her giggles died into soft, helpless little noises that went straight to his cock.

Ben reached around and slipped his fingers between her shaking thighs, rucking up the hem of his dress shirt and dragging three thick fingers through the folds of her cunt. His hand came back dripping wet.

“Ben.” she grabbed his wrist. Her pretty, lipstick-stained lips parted, and she huffed out a sigh.

“Come on. You can give me one more, pretty baby.”

“I can’t.” she protested, shoving at his hands. But it was glib. Coy. Like when she insisted she wasn’t the most beautiful woman in the world.

“Yes you can.” Gently-- oh-so gently, by now he knew better than to just fling her toy city aside-- he picked up the baking soda container and the kleenex box and deposited them on the other side of the coffee table so he could roll them over onto the carpet, her splayed overtop of him. She shivered and arched, pressing her wrists into his hands. She wanted him to pin her. Knock her around. Call her Princess. Pull her hair.

She liked him to tease her. She liked to beg prettily for it, to have to promise to be good. He didn’t want to hear that. Not now.

Ben smoothed his hands around her narrow hips, across the plane of her her soft tummy, over the tiny, heaving cage of her brittle ribs. They stopped to palm the rose-tipped points of her breasts through the cotton of his dress shirt. Lingered over her tiny, fluttering heart. “Move up, Rey.” he murmured.

She blinked down at him.

He pressed a hand against her lower back, so she tipped forward with her hands braced near his head. She got the message. Her hips wriggled as she crawled up to perch on his chin. The hem of her shirt fell over his eyes.

“Good girl.” his big hands curled around her thighs and he dragged her down to his mouth.

“Dadddyyy…” she whimpered, high and soft and babyish, as he lashed the flat of his tongue against her tender flesh. She was raw and wet, pulsing gushes slick like seeping honeycomb, rich enough to coat his tongue.

He let her buck her hips and grind against his mouth for a moment more before catching her hips in his hands and pulling her off. He couldn’t see her, but he knew her head was thrown back, her back arched, face screwed up with sensation.

“Daddy…” she keened, struggling in his grip.

“Behave.” he kissed the crease of her thigh, holding her a fraction of an inch shy of what she wanted. “Daddy’s gonna take care of you.” He licked a circle around her clit and flicked the hood with the tip of his tongue. 

She tugged his hair. “Teeth?”

“No.” his voice was muffled.

“Fingers?”

He pulled off her with a soft smacking sound. “Hush.”

She whimpered.

“Easy, Baby.” he said, soothing the admonishment with a long, slow lick. “Daddy knows what’s best for you.” 

She melted at the words. The tightly drawn muscles in the backs of her shoulders relaxed and her weight shifted on top of him.

“Good girl.” he pulled back and breathed a soft stream of cool air over her sore little pussy.  
He shouldn’t have fucked her again. Stupid. She was so swollen. It had to hurt her, no matter how she carried on.

“But-- but Daddy.” she wheedled. She knew the rule against wheedling.

This was always her strategy, when all else failed. When he failed. When he wasn’t doing something right, Rey would always refer to the default. The thing that got her what she wanted without fail.

Break a rule.

He ignored it. Ben sucked at her clit in soft pulls and gentle, rhythmic tugs, open-mouthed kisses and flicks of his tongue.

She whimpered. “Daddy… Daddy I need more.”

“Shhhh.” he held her steady so she couldn’t buck against his mouth. “You’ve already had too much.”

“Mmmm.” she let out a frustrated whine. “Please--”

“I’ll take care of you.” he kissed her again. “Trust me.”

She breathed in starts and little gasps. He dug his littlest finger into her and crooked it gently.

“Please.” she breathed. “I’ll be a real good girl.”

His hands squeezed her legs. He spread her open wider and drew his tongue over her in the shape of his initials.“You _are_ a good girl.” he said. He dragged her back down to his mouth.

 

 

Two orgasms later, he took her to breakfast. Not at Tiffany’s. At the little cafe she liked in town, the one she thought was French. They sat at the old-timey train car booth by the window. Ben ordered her a chocolate croissant and a cup of English Breakfast. 

“So.” he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You know. You know I work as a… sort of… contractor.”

“Yeah.” Rey bobbed her head disinterestedly, not breaking her gaze away from the careful knot she was tying in her straw wrapper.

“It’s… not strictly… legal. What I do.”

Rey cinched the knot and snapped the straw wrapper in her hand. “I always do that.” She said. “Cause you get to make a wish, and if the knots in your right hand it’ll come true. If it’s in your left, it doesn’t, and if it’s a clean break—” she indicated the two whole halves in her hands, “— you don’t get an answer.”

“I don’t-- I don’t know how to say this--”

“I shouldn’t really do it ‘tall.” Said Rey, deflating suddenly. “Cause straws are killin all the poor wales, did you know that?”

He blinked. “Yes, honey. Listen--”

“Dossen matter anyway, I already got my wishes.” she smiled up at him, toothily.

The words died on his lips. The rest of the world fell away.

“Can I getchya anything else, Sugar?” Their waitress was refilling his coffee cup.

“Nothing.” he said. He reached across the table and pulled a scrap of croissant out from under a fold in her napkin. He looked her in the eyes and put it purposefully back on her plate. Rey’s eyes flickered to the table top. “Everything’s fine.”

The waitress puttered away. There was the muffled sound of pots and pans clanging from the kitchen, and a dull hum of chatter from the dozen-or-so other patrons.

They still hadn’t talked about anything. Anything.

Ben took another sip of his coffee. He looked at her, with her doe-eyes and her baby-skin and her mouthful of pretty words.

“You’re a good girl, Rey.” he said, at long last.

She looked up at him, and all over again it struck him how unnatural this was. This shouldn’t be allowed. Something so precious and innocent shouldn’t be in his care. But she was.

He swallowed hard and blinked against an all-too familiar prick of heat at the backs of his eyes. He choked the words out with his heart in his throat. “You’re _my_ good girl.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to the marvelous PastelWonder for being such a lovely supportive talented inspiring collaborator. This story would be rudderless without you. xoxo  
> And of course thank you all for your patience, I know I am always sososo slow to update and respond to comments, so know that I'm grateful for all your kind words and support! Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> https://royramsey.tumblr.com/
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelWonder/works
> 
> https://inspirationalmisquotes.tumblr.com/


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